MAGA bloodlust is in the air as a cloud of racism and conspiracy theories swirl amid conservatives’ attempts to portray Minnesota’s Somali community as rife with criminal fraudsters.
And some are even calling for the state’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, to possibly face execution.
As my colleague Julianne McShane recently explained, the MAGA movement’s current obsession with alleged social services fraud in Minnesota coincided with a racist rant that President Donald Trump unleashed toward Somalis at a Cabinet meeting last month.
Conservatives have cherry-picked news reports and relied on dubious allegations from influencers — including one steered by Minnesota Republicans — to portray Somalis as synonymous with fraud, despite the fact that the person convicted of overseeing the fraud in question is a white woman named Aimee Bock.
Nonetheless, right-wing streamer Zack Hoyt — who goes by “Asmongold” — told his followers this week that the falsity-filled allegations should result in entire Somali families being denaturalized and deported. (I recently wrote about Hoyt due to his public support for subjecting pro-immigrant protesters to slave labor.)
Hoyt also had a stark message for the White House.
“If JD Vance does not push for treason with capital punishment against Tim Walz, do not vote for him,” he said. “If Trump does not deliver that, do not vote for him. Unless the most extreme, dramatic, brutal, aggressive option is on the table, I’m staying home.”
Here Asmongold says government officials should be killed and Elon says it needs to happen. Feel like the richest man on earth calling for the death of his political opponents should be a bigger story pic.twitter.com/DvynAoPhUL
On Wednesday, the Right Angle News Network shared a clip of the rant on X, summarizing Hoyt as saying that “entire families must be denaturalized and deported, and that the officials who allowed it to happen must face treason and capital punishment charges.”
Musk shared the Right Angle News Network’s post and added: “That is what’s needed to stop the fraud.”
Many in the MAGA movement seem to have a conniption any time that someone — anywhere — utters a critical word about slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, at times accusing them of glorifying violence. Meanwhile, some conservatives — including Musk, the president’s top campaign donor — are pushing for Minnesota leaders to face the death penalty. And this is just months after two Democratic state lawmakers in Minnesota were shot, one of them fatally, in what appears to have been political assassination.
Looking at the state of the union through that lens, it could not be clearer that these conservatives are actual advocates for political violence in America.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.