For vice-president JD Vance, it must have been a furrowed-brow moment. President Trump was in the cabinet room on Tuesday, riffing on Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, which is the latest state to feature in targeted raids by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).
Over Thanksgiving, Trump had referred to Walz as “seriously retarded”. If there was ever a time when a US president using that phrase would have drawn widespread condemnation from world leaders, it has passed. The main criticism came from Joseph Moreno, a Republican former federal prosecutor, who said it was “indefensible”.
So, at the tail end of a marathon three-hour cabinet meeting during which Trump had seemed in good mood, he ended on a familiar note of anti-immigrant toxicity, aimed at the long-settled Somali community around the Twin Cities of St Paul and Minneapolis.
“I think the man’s a grossly incompetent man,” Trump continued when invited to revisit his views on Walz, resurrecting the animus he felt towards the governor during his ill-starred spell as Kamala Harris’s running mate.
“I thought that from the day I watched JD destroy him in the debate,” before offering a reflection that must have made everyone in the room, none more so than Vance, do a double-take.
“I was saying: who is more incompetent? That man, or my man. I had a man. He had a man. They were both incompetent. And I had a man and a woman – I thought she was very incompetent too. And now she’s leading the field. I think she is leading the field for the nomination.
“Anyway. Look, that’s up to them. That’s up to the Democrats. Look, the problem with them is they have really bad policy. And I’m not going to say what it is because I don’t want them to change it necessarily. Because I want to run against it – it’s not going to be me. It’s probably going to be someone at this table. It could be a couple of people sitting at this table. I want them to win because we have done a great job for this country and I want them to be carried forward. And I think we have a tremendous bench.”
For Vance – and other pretenders to the throne – there was a lot to unpack in this sidebar from the president. Did Trump, either unwittingly or with casual intent, describe his own vice-president as incompetent?
Many outlets quickly decided to interpret it that way. It’s more probably that the “both” he referred to in this instance meant Walz and Harris. But those few sentences gave plenty of opportunity for any number of cabinet members to imagine themselves as one of “the people sitting at this table” who may be thrust towards destiny in 2028.
Because after months of teasing the idea of a third term run, which Maga activist Steve Bannon is adamant will happen, Trump seemed to rule himself out here. He still has three full years of this term to run. That may be beginning to look like an awful long hike to trudge through. He will be turning 83 when the next inauguration takes place.
Trump holds so many live broadcast press conferences that sometimes his more revelatory observations become lost in the noise. In the recent furore over his age/energy, it was noted that he hasn’t held any campaign rallies this year. The White House could easily point out that he doesn’t need to: his every conference is carried live by every major media company in the country. The rallies will become a feature next year, in advance of the midterm elections. For now, Trump has the luxury of bringing his campaign riffs to the cabinet table, which he did as he unleashed a vicious attack on Minnesota’s most high-profile politician and, by extension, the Somali community.
“No. I think Walz is a grossly incompetent man,” he continued.
“There’s something wrong with him. And when you look at what he has done with Somalia – which is barely a country. They have no … anything. They just run around killing each other. There’s no structure. And when I see someone like Ilhan Omar [the Democratic congresswoman for Minnesota] whom I don’t know but I always watch her. For years I’ve watched her complain about our constitution, how she is treated badly, how the United States of America is a bad place. Hates everybody, hates Jewish people – and I think she’s an incompetent person.
“She’s a terrible person. But when I watch what is happening in Minnesota – the land of a thousand lakes or however many lakes they have, they gotta lot of lakes. But it’s a beautiful place and when I see these people ripping it off and now I am understanding, I hear Somalians ripped off that state for billions of dollars every year. Billions of dollars. And they contribute nothing. The welfare is like 88 per cent.
“I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest. Some will say: that’s not politically correct. I don’t care. Their country’s no good for a reason. Their country stinks. And we don’t want them in our country. I could say that about other countries too. We have to rebuild our country. You know, our country is at a tipping point. We could go one way or the other. And we are going to go the wrong way if we keep on taking garbage into our country.
“Ilhan Omar is garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work, who say: come on, let’s make this place great. These are people that do nothing but complain. They complain. And from where they came from – they got nothing. They come from hell and complain and do nothing but bitch. We don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to their own country and fix it.”
It was an extraordinary note on which to end the last cabinet meeting of the year. Attentive listeners would have heard an election echo: when Trump held his Madison Square Garden rally in October, it was overshadowed by a warm-up comedian referring to Hispanics as “garbage” in what was intended as a humorous, roast-style routine. For a few days, there was earnest debate as to how the slur might affect the immigrant vote for Trump.
The Somali rant was condemned by voices ranging from Bernie Sanders to Ben Stiller but drew a noticeably subdued response from Democratic voices on Capitol Hill, distracted by the drug-boat bombing controversy.
On Wednesday, it was announced that James Comer, chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government has launched an investigation of fraud amounting to $240 million (€295 million) from the Federal Child Nutrition Programme and a separate $100 million fraud on a social housing scheme.
Dozens of people were charged in relation to the fraud perpetrated by the Feeding Our Future group, the majority of whom are of Somali descent. But it’s a tiny fraction of the estimated 80,000-strong Somali community in the state, some of whose leaders publicly endorsed Trump during last year’s election. Walz has been asked by the House Committee to respond to accusations of governing a vast welfare state in which fraud has been rampant.
On Wednesday, it was confirmed that Ice operations were active in both New Orleans and Minnesota. A day later, Walz, nominally speaking on the state budget, addressed the Cabinet Room comments, denouncing Trump’s words as “vile racist lies and slander”.
“Donald Trump’s calling our neighbours garbage and the state of Minnesota a hellhole, I’m assuming is unprecedented for a United States president. We’ve had little children going to school today whom their president called them garbage. This shouldn’t be that difficult to conflate,” he said.
“You commit crimes, you go to jail. It doesn’t matter about your race, ethnicity or religion. But demonising an entire group of people by their race and ethnicity, the very people who contribute to the economic vitality, economic culture of the state, is something I was hoping we would never have to see. This is on top of all the other vile comments.”
Walz ends this year as he ended the last: trading verbal blows with Trump. He vowed that Minnesota would stand strong with the Somali and other minority communities as the Twin Cities prepares for a tense Christmas season.
