President Donald Trump doubled down on his use of an offensive term for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Trump, 79, stood firm on his line of attack against his Democratic foe after reporters aboard Air Force One pressed him on his use of the term “ret---ed” in a scathing Truth Social diatribe to mark Thanksgiving.
“You mentioned Tim Walz and you called him—what many Americans do find an offensive word—ret---ed. Do you stand by that claim of calling Tim Walz ret---ed?” a reporter asked on Sunday.
“There’s something wrong with him, absolutely, sure,” Trump shot back. “I think there’s something wrong with him. Anybody that would do what he did, anybody that would allow those people into a state and pay billions of dollars [to] Somalia—we give billions of dollars to Somalia. It’s not even a country, because it doesn’t function like a country. It’s got a name, but it doesn’t function like a country. Yeah, there’s something wrong with Walz.”
The White House appeared to relish in Trump’s remarks, reposting his comments with a laughing emoji in an X post.
The president first used the slur against Walz in a social media post last week claiming that Somalian refugees had taken over Minnesota, which was rocked by a massive fraud scandal in which Somalis allegedly swindled the state’s social services system.
Walz told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that he didn’t take the insults personally, but branded the dated term “damaging” and “hurtful.”
“Donald Trump insulting me is a badge of honor for me, but I think we all know, as both as an educator for a couple of decades and as a parent, using that term is just so damaging. It’s hurtful,” he said. “This is what Donald Trump has done: he’s normalized this type of hateful behavior and this type of language. And mainly, look, at first, I think it’s just because he’s not a good human being. But secondly, to distract from his incompetence.”
The Minnesota governor, 61, vowed to crack down on fraud in his state but stressed that “to demonize an entire community on the actions of a few—it’s lazy.”
“That’s Donald Trump: deflect, demonize, come up with no solutions. He’s not going to help fix anything on fraud,” he said.
After Trump pounced on him last week, Walz called for the release of the aging president’s MRI results.
Trump told reporters that he was willing to release those results as he repeated earlier statements that he had no idea what the MRI looked into.
“If they want to release it, it’s okay with me to release it,” he said.
“This is a serious position. It’s the most powerful position in the world, and we have someone at midnight throwing around slurs that demonize our children, and at the same time, he’s not solving any of the problems, so I’m deeply concerned that he is incapable of doing the job,” Walz said.
