Natalie Kitroeff

Hmm.

You're saying people are seeing this as potentially giving people permission to act on their worst instincts.

It's a permission structure.

Correct.

Okay, I want to talk about why this is happening, why the federal government has turned its attention to this community of 80,000 people.

In his diatribe, Trump hinted at the reason for the hostility.

He said that Somalis had stolen all of this money.

This is a story you've been covering, right?

Walk us through how Somalis became the subject of this vitriolic attack from the president.

Right.

This is something we've known about, right?

This was part of the widespread fraud that we saw where pandemic programs were taken advantage of.

How far did it actually go?

Like, what are we talking about here in terms of scale, in terms of scope?

You're saying this went far beyond just pandemic fraud and that almost everyone involved in these schemes was Somali Americans.

But if the figures were so big, how did it go unnoticed?

Right.

This was happening in a very particular place at a very particular time when tensions over race are extremely high.

Got it.

So there was a perceived political risk there.