Natalie Kitroeff

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.

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.