Natalie Kitroeff

Eventually, though, prosecutors do start to go after this, right?

So as the details of this years-long, billion-dollar scandal start to spill out into the open, do Minnesotans start to reckon with how this threat of accusing people of racism was used as a tool to allow this fraud to go on?

So it is at this point a place that's doing some soul searching about what happens when, you know, it's so lax in the enforcement of its own rules and regulations around these liberal policies that those policies start to get taken advantage of and potentially end up turning people against them.

Ernesto, you just told us that things on the ground in Minnesota have taken a very different turn since Trump started to focus on this.

And I want to understand that.

But first, can we just get to the question of why Trump decided to seize on this right now?

Because you've described this scandal that's been playing out in the background for a while now, for years, with this steady drumbeat of revelations coming out over time.

And Rufo here is specifically saying that this money from the fraud, that it has a link to terrorism.

Wow.

Okay.

So that got a lot of attention, whether it was true or not.

Right.

This has really become a moment where the administration has turned its focus to specific groups of immigrants from places that, as you said, have a reputation for instability, for conflict.

And the message the White House has been sending about these people is that they're importing cultures into America that are not welcome.

You know, Stephen Miller, Trump's domestic policy advisor, recently posted this on social media.

He said, quote, And then in his comments on Tuesday, Trump seems to pick up right where Miller left off.

It also just strikes me that this is all happening, this conversation, so much more out in the open than it was in Trump's first term.

I mean, I think a lot of us will remember the comment that Trump made about shithole countries.

That was behind closed doors.

That was a comment made in private that was later revealed.