It'd be disingenuous of me to pretend I have any respect to lose for Tim Walz.
He abandoned his National Guard unit on the eve of a deployment to run for Congress.
He tossed aside his "moderate Democrat" cred and his "A" rating from the NRA to rebrand himself as a "progressive" to run for Governor.
His leadership during the Covid crisis was a failure even by blue-state standards. Not just incompenent, but deceptive; his administration literally concealed the statistical model they'd used to predict 70,000 deaths in four months (maybe 20,000 as a "best possible case" if they shut the entire state down and seized emergency power), because "people might use it to reach different conclusions than we did".
His handling of the 2020 riots was positively craven, delaying calling out the National Guard for days while East Lake street and, incidentally, my neighborhood in Saint Paul got looted, burned and vandalized to a greasy sheen.
And David's done a stellar job of his hamfisted Jefferson Davis schtick during the current illegal immigration crisis. And that's not even talking about the colossal fraud machine that's been assembled under his hapless regime.
There is literally no respect, no credibility, nothing whatsoever for the Governor to lose in my view. I have personally never respected a politician less than Tim Walz.
But I have to try. He's outdone himself yet again. He's appropriated Anne Frank to take his shot at ICE:
Gov. Walz: "We grew up reading the story of Anne Frank. Somebody is gonna write one regarding Minnesota." pic.twitter.com/t8LEAFhZEr
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 25, 2026
You don't have to be much of a student of 20th century, of Germany in World War 2, or of the Holocaust to see what a deeply stupid statement that is.
I am a student of that horrific era, thought, and even by Walz's self-indulgent standards, that analogy is bonkers. Say what you will about ICE - I have my criticisms, and as of yesterday so does the Administration - but nobody's disappearing without a trace, nobody's being being machine-gunned or gassed and cremated, and nobody will be.
But the US Holocaust Museum? They are the ones with the duty of keeping the actual memory of those actual existential horrors alive and on focus. And they are neither amused nor impressed by the Governor's command of the story:
Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish. Leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable. Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges. pic.twitter.com/VVg0Uy7kjR
— US Holocaust Museum (@HolocaustMuseum) January 26, 2026
On Monday, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum put out a statement saying “Anne Frank was targeted and murdered solely because she was Jewish.”
“Leaders making false equivalencies to her experience for political purposes is never acceptable,” the statement added, without naming Walz. “Despite tensions in Minneapolis, exploiting the Holocaust is deeply offensive, especially as antisemitism surges.”
Of course, there are those who think the metaphor works:
But others said the comparison was apt, with a quotation from Frank’s diary circulating widely online as it did in 2019 in response to ICE raids then. The quotation, those sharing it suggested, offered a close parallel to what has been playing out in Minnesota.
“Terrible things are happening outside,” the passage says. “Poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. … Everyone is scared.”
The "poor helpless people" aren't always Tren de Aragua or sex traffickers - there can be criticism of some of ICE's excesses - but even the worst among those apprehended aren't winding up dead in a camp in Wyoming.
Few things grind my gears quite as hard as people misappropriating that piece of history. I'm happy - or at least relieved - to see the Holucaust Museum feels the same.
