Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s daughter admitted there was “enough truth” to the alleged billion-dollar fraud scandal plaguing the North Star State — as she opened up about her father’s abrupt decision to drop his bid for a third term.
Hope Walz appeared on “One Hour Detours” with host John O’Sullivan just hours after her dad announced he was bowing out of the 2026 governor’s race “to kind of get that target off of Minnesota.”
“I think there was enough truth to the fraud claim,” the 25-year-old said.
However, she then whined that President Trump and his supporters had twisted and amplified the scandal involving Minnesota’s generous social safety net.
Estimates vary, but the theft is thought to be at least $1 billion. First Assistant US Attorney Joe Thompson claimed late last year that the fraud could be $9 billion or more.
The fraud was prevalent among Minnesota’s Somali population, where people set up bogus nonprofits to get state funding to provide services to the homeless, hungry, and individuals in need of day care for their children.
Hope said her father had taken the brunt of the blame because of his national profile, which ultimately led him to bow out of the race.
“I think he was popular during the campaign last fall, and he’s still in office, and he’s running again — and so it’s just kind of an easy thing for them [Republicans] to pick up on,” she told the podcast.
“I think it’s because he’s everything Trump will never be,” she insisted.
Hope said her father began to reconsider running again, “with things rapidly changing within the last month,” and came to the decision during the holidays.
“I don’t want to speak for him, but I think when things started getting really intense for me like on my social media and then people even saying things like to [her brother] Gus and stuff, I think that’s when he was really like, ‘Okay, like, I need to evaluate what’s best for the state and then I need to evaluate what’s best for my family,’” she recalled.
“And then, I think it was just kind of a natural conclusion.”
Hope’s interview comes after she claimed critics were targeting Gus, her younger brother, with insults, following Trump’s attacks on her father.
“I’m talking about this because while my family and I are always gonna be the bigger people, the president calling my dad what he did has unleashed a f–king s–tstorm regarding offensive language towards me and my family and specifically my brother,” she raged in a now-deleted TikTok video.
“You can call me whatever you want, you can call my dad, my mom, when it’s Gus, f–k to the no. He dealt with people calling him that last August, and now there’s a resurgence? No.”
Trump ripped the Minnesota governor as “seriously retarded” when he accused him of letting tens of thousands of Somali immigrants take over his “once great state” in a Thanksgiving message.
Scrutiny of former Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2024 veep pick has intensified over the past few weeks, after conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley released a viral video exposing empty taxpayer-funded day care centers.
Prosecutors have charged more than 90 people with fraud.
