Political Happy Hour: New details in Rep. Omar case

Our political contributor, Bloyce Olson, congratulations on a wonderful pre-game and post-game show to the debate last night. Thank you. Yeah, you guys did a wonderful job. It was good. You know, I think just viewers should understand, because they cut in, they cut out, they see us. You guys dedicating that much time, the station dedicating that much time, is felt in the community. The number of people who text me and say, wow, that was really good, and I can't get enough, and da-da-da-da. and i think the way the station has dedicated itself to political coverage this year is being noticed by people who care we've got good bosses around here so there you go uh we're doing good stuff okay so let's talk about the debate uh this is likely the last time we are going to see senator amy klobuchar take on a face-off against Lisa Damon and this was an opportunity i really think our first mainstream opportunity to see a uh wide ranging look at these two candidates they've done forums that are themed you know they've done senior care events they've done business events they've done ag events but this was questions about all of it yes um it got fiery but i want your initial take on the debate and if you think one of the two came out ahead you know what i think is that um neither one of them made a major unforced error uh i think that amy klobuchar wishes she would have been less rattled by the attacks of trying to connect her to Tim Walz and i think Lisa Dymuth's like i think i did pretty good and better than people expected um what the interesting thing is is we'll talk about this later but Amy Klobuchar went straight after her on the announcement gun violence thing and we'll have a clip because there's a news conference going on right now i think that is Amy Klobuchar's close and i think she tried to start it last night and it didn't quite hit the way she wanted to so she held the news conference today and i think Lisa Dymuth has been able to rebuff that issue i also just think that the visuals of it etc Lisa Dymuth looked really calm under pressure and the way I've talked about it in other places today is I think people need to if they feel like they're taking a risk with Lisa Dymuth if they're an independent voter because they're like she's been speaker but she hasn't been a senator for 20 years and then with Klobuchar they're like I'm not a lover but she will get it done and she says I will get it done I think um I think that helps her uh in a big way especially as we tackle the big issues of state government. Grace will you just get that clip ready from the debate last night because uh they both right were trying to attach the other to the administration in charge so Dymuth was trying to attach uh Klobuchar to Walls Klobuchar was trying to attach Dymuth to Trump because Trump and Walls both have not too good favorability ratings right now um neither one of them is is polling very good in the favorability department so uh it was really interesting i mean i think i heard Walls and Trump easily a dozen times yeah easily a dozen times somebody asked me if they had a drinking game what phrase that i would recommend trump walz i said fraud trump walz you would be very toasted you'd be toasted and we we can talk about those things on the happy hour um so here's just a sampling of them going back and forth about trying to attach the other to those leaders. Take a listen. You have not heard my opponent differ from one policy bill that Tim Walz, who she calls an incredible governor, has allowed to go forward. I would love to hear one bill, one area, child care fraudulent funding. I would love to hear that if she has separated herself specifically from Tim Walz. Tim Walz allowed the child care fraud and other fraud here in the state of Minnesota to explode to nine billion dollars, never firing any of his commissioners or agency employees. But yet you have someone standing here tonight that is supporting everything from the incredible governor, as she has said he is. Well, I have from the very beginning of this campaign and our race against each other made it very clear how I differ from Tim Walz. But my opponent literally on a public radio station said that she can't think of any way that she differs from Donald Trump. Yet he has just endorsed her for this race for governor. So I would like to know because I don't think we need a rubber stamp of Donald Trump in the governor's office i think we need someone who can get things done for you and look out for you and not him and one of his top donors who is financing her ads who is a billionaire out of wisconsin who by the way is a packers fan i like the way she ended that there you know she knows what's going to get to minnesotans and packers yeah although i i mean i just think that there was a couple other places she could have landed and stopped talking and maybe made Speaker Da Muth respond. But I think here's the deal. I mean, anybody who's been through a debate or maybe an argument knows that if you sit there and smile like Lisa Damon did, it might actually drive them crazier, the person who's trying to get under your skin. And I think she did well there. But is that issues, is they push forward on that? That's Lisa Damon's close. Tim Walz is extremely unpopular the polls show that his favorability is in line with Donald Trump and so that's how they're going to try to attach it the other thing is I think people understand that a governor isn't a rubber stamp for Donald Trump like that's not the way governing works and I think people look at it that way meanwhile she did say it was an incredible governor and you know Courtney, if you had said something about somebody I that turned out to be inaccurate I'd be like but you said Courtney, well you know and and I think it raises that why didn't you say something earlier and I do think that is one of the things Minnesota voters are like somebody should have said something louder earlier okay and while Damith uh has not been able to distance herself from Trump too much hasn't come out and said what she would uh what she would do differently Klobuchar on the other hand is saying some things and making some promises that don't sound too liberal so for example uh she says I won't raise taxes I'll even lower them if I can if I can that is incredible coming from a Democrat and then she wants to hire more police officers right I was surprised by that as well we talked about this last night she said we're short a thousand police officers and we're going to be short another thousand and I thought about the conversations she's going to have to have with the left flank of the DFL it's going to be like we're not giving of money for more police officers in Minnesota. She's going to have to battle with them. And the question is, does she win the battle and give them something? Or does she stay stubborn and say, here's my budget? The rule of thumb that we use is that most governors get 80% of what they want. Governor Walz was always like, you take your 50, I'll take my 50, and everybody was happy. That's not going to be the same if Klobuchar is governor. And I think she's starting to send signals to legislators. I'm going to have a plan. Get on board now. And I don't think all of them will get on board, but I think many of them will. Does she have to come off more moderate in order to win Minnesota? Yes. Okay. In this environment. Well, look at the Senate race. Peggy Flanagan's much more liberal. That race is much closer. Yeah. She's just got more trust. I mean, she is the standard bearer, not just of Democratic politics, but the biggest vote getter in nonjudicial races for 20 years. Okay, so let's talk about, you brought it up in the beginning here, but because they just wrapped up a press conference about this. I want to bring it up again. We just saw Senator Amy Klobuchar flanked by Harper Moiskey's family. Harper Moiskey tragically died in the Annunciation Catholic school shooting. Just horrible. I mean, I just these parents, what they've been through is just incredible. And they held an event with Amy today. A news conference. Yes. Saying we support Amy. And this comes after in the debate, Amy called out uh Lisa DeMint for uh not allowing a vote on the house floor for the gun safety bill she claimed in the debate last night that DeMint lied to Harper's parents saying that she promised them a vote DeMint pushed back saying I promised them that I would give it a vote but I did not promise them that I would vote on it right and the technicality here from the legislative standpoint is there were eight votes about this bill procedural there was never a vote on the floor and ultimately Lisa DeMint had control over what bills go to the floor that's the power of the speaker and the reality is she didn't want her own republican members to have to take that vote in an election year so think about you know kind of the western suburbs or northern suburbs where suburban parents are really fearful of gun violence in schools and school shootings and then you would have representative ABC get all this mail that he voted against protecting kids and so Lisa DeMint standing strong for her caucus may be the issue in the governor's race that prevents her from making up more ground let's listen to some sound from Amy Klobuchar from that press conference that just wrapped up. She even went to a Republican event and bragged about the fact that she was, quote, the only one who was blocking a vote. We have that quote. So for her to now say it was other people, it was committees, it was out of our control. That is not true. Those are her exact words. We can disagree about policy, but I believe that as a leader, you keep your word. Okay, well there you have it. Uh, is that does that sway voters? Do you think having, uh, you know, a gun violence victim's family stand up there with her? It does. It pulls at the heartstrings, it humanizes the story, um, and I would just say that if you look at the undecided voters they're suburban women, and this is an issue that suburban women care about now if they are if this is a top issue for them they've already decided but if it's on the fence, this is Amy Klobuchar's clothes and her clothes is about heart over issues or numbers or fraud or growth, I was going to say this seemed like not only was it pointing out what they perceive as a failure by Lisa Dymuth but I believe that this press conference was also to humanize Amy Klobuchar because Harper's mother talked about how when the cameras weren't rolling, right? Amy showed compassion for their family, yeah, and that humanizes her. Well, she said the mom said, Harper's mom said Amy Klobuchar was there the night of the shooting, she met us there, she um, connected with our other daughter there and I will say this: Amy Klobuchar has a lot of intensity but part of that intensity is the fact that she was a U.S. Senator. And on that night, she chose to go there. And that's the intensity that keeps her as so formidable of an opponent because now she can build this now. Now, let's remember when that happened, she didn't know she was running for governor. She didn't know this would even be an issue in the governor's race. But it was that hard. It was that that night that got her there. And I think that goes to show kind of the hard work pays off for her because now she's got that relationship. She's got a news conference. And, you know, I bet you there's an ad coming out maybe tomorrow. Funny how that works. Also big news today. Representative Ilhan Omar sat down for her first interview, an exclusive interview with MSNBC's Chris Hayes. This is the first interview since her home was raided, her Washington, D.C. home was raided in what is believed to be an immigration investigation. So what's your take on this? Was there anything that you heard in that interview that really stood out to you or I don't know? Well, let's just set it up. It's MS NBC. It is a very friendly interview. They're not going to press her. They're not going to poke her. they're gonna kind of give her some softballs they might have even given her the questions beforehand uh she clearly has been on Chris Hayes's show before Chris Hayes is kind of like i'm gonna ask you these questions so we can answer them but he's not even serious about answering the questions or asking the questions so i look at uh Representative Omar going through this ultimately for a politician this is the same thing as Tom Emmer going on Fox News they're going to be friendly but then you get the clip and you're like oh i did an interview here i'm out there i can break some news in one channel that's the strategy because then all the other channels pick up the one interview you don't have to do 10 interviews and it's a soft interview so it's almost like a scripted piece i don't i the one thing i will say is there was some flippant pieces and i think when you're under a federal investigation being flippant can backfire She's gonna be careful because whatever she says now can be used against her in a court of law. And Wright is going crazy because she said about, quote, marrying her brother, not to my knowledge, or not as I recall- Yes, not to my knowledge. Not to my knowledge. Well, A, that's a safe answer if he comes back up in court. And B, for Democrats, they're like, yeah, mock them, mock them. And that's the game they're playing. But the reality is, look, she's not in electoral trouble. We don't know yet if she's in legal trouble. But I don't think even if she gets into legal trouble, she's going to have electoral trouble because her supporters are so passionate. They are, yes. Okay, so a few things that we learned in this interview, though, I just want to outline. She described being home when the warrant was served. We were not sure if she was home at the time. She says she was home. She had been traveling, so she got home late. And then the knock came on the door at 6 a.m. There were 15 to 25 HSI agents there. She said they were largely respectful and professional, but they went room by room and only took 17 items, including personal phones and notebooks belonging to her husband. So she was a little surprised that they did this whole raid and then only walked off with 17 items. They did not take a DNA sample. Chris Hayes asked if they took a DNA sample. They did not. She believes, she says in this interview, that the goal of the raid was to intimidate her and to prove to the Trump administration supporters that they are taking action on immigration fraud. Overall, she called the whole thing, quote, bizarre. Yeah. Well, I mean, we've seen other raids where they carry out box after box after box. The question is, if this is about immigration, what's in the notebooks? But if it's about finances, computers, things like that, are going to have emails, things like that. So speaking of finances, the other big headline out of the interview was her saying, we live paycheck to paycheck. That's going to be hard, I think, for voters to consume when her original financial disclosure said that her and her husband were worth $30 million. Right. She goes on this interview and says, oh, that was a mistake. That was before we released the disclosures. He's actually worth, we actually have zero dollars and we're living paycheck to paycheck. Is it believable? Probably not. He was a successful media consultant before. He's had investments. He was a part of a venture capital firm. I don't know how her husband makes his money. But again, this idea that the disclosure, financial disclosure shifted, and then they're like, it made a mistake. You're guilty of one of two things. either misleading or being sloppy pick which one you'd like to plead to all right uh we're gonna take a quick break we'll be back after this President Donald Trump visiting Iowa today so this has been a traditionally Republican state yep that is now considered up for grabs yeah it's um Donald Trump won Iowa by 12 points just two years ago by 14 points i believe in 2024 I think it was 12.9 my notes are wrong that's okay he won it by a healthy margin there you go and now it's in play and it's in play for a U.S. Senate seat and a governor's seat we're seeing this in multiple places we're seeing in Kansas we're seeing it in Texas where Donald Trump was very popular there's multiple factors here but Republicans have made the decision that it's easier to hold Senate seats rather than try to win Democratic Senate seats other places. And so as we think about this, he's going to try to rally. This is the strategy is it's those hardcore MAGA voters that haven't voted in midterms. You've heard him say, act like I'm on the ballot. And that's about in Iowa, that's about 150,000 votes in a state with low population like Iowa. That's a lot of votes and they need them from rural areas there's also like fraud in minnesota there's an outlier issue in iowa and it's water pollution and there's been major reporting on water pollution higher incidence of cancer a lot of ag runoff issues that people were there and so you even have farmers dealing with the farm economy and then feeling like oh my gosh we have got a water problem here how do we fix it it's not just the trump economy it's the ag economy and then it's this water pollution issue and so very close senate race which is the main reason he's there but also a very close governor's race yeah rural health care is a big topic in those races uh he released uh their plans for investment in rural communities leading up to this visit to iowa so uh in the press release from the white House that was put out today. It says he's going to President Trump's working families tax cuts are delivering real relief to the Hawkeye state. They say that they're going to direct resources to expand access and modernize care in Iowa's rural communities. So you see health care a big a big a big issue here. And then that they have been driving major private investment and job creation uh across the state they bring up the steel mine the masabi metallic steel mine that they jobs that they directed there yeah yeah so uh clearly he is going there and trying to convince the rural voters hey hey it's not that bad i know your diesel prices are through the roof and i know tariffs have killed you but it's not that bad yeah iowa was the first place we saw that trump might be in trouble it's the first place his endorsement didn't work his candidate for governor did not make it through the Republican primary. Interesting. And let's talk about this because we only have a few more minutes, but I do want to get to this event that's taking place on Monday. So Hassan Piker is a controversial socialist, far left wing streamer. He's one of the most popular streamers on, is it Twitch? Twitch. Twitch. Never heard of it, but that's what I watched it the other night. It is a fascinating way to consume your media. So those of us who consume a lot of media it's like all day on steroids times 10 okay well it's very popular among the kids it's like youtube um but but but more yeah um so he's coming to minnesota on monday in an event hosted by state senator Omar Fateh and congresswoman ilhan omar will be expected to be in attendance now piker is very controversial yes he has said many anti-semitic things correct uh he has made comments about 9-11 that are stated that he thought 9-11 was good for america right uh obviously very offensive to the thousands of families that were impacted by 9-11 and americans and and americans but lives that were lost that day so he's very controversial democrats here in the state of minnesota have tried to distance themselves from this event Klobuchar has denounced this individual. Angie Craig has denounced it. And now we've seen this parade of Democrats saying it. We saw a bunch of state senators yesterday led by Ron Latz. Ron Latz, state senator, who was primaried by a DSA liberal this year. He beat the DSA liberal. He's a longtime state senator. He and Representative Ilhan Omar have not ever really gotten along. He's pushed back against her many times. And so when you look at that dynamic, now people are coming out. But some people who are saying things are not denouncing his visit. They are saying this is important for the young voters. Robin Wansley, city council member, this is what young voters like. And we need them to show up in the midterms. But to be fair, Robin Wansley is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. But it's more about the strategy. Democrats also know that young people aren't likely to vote in midterms. And that's why they understand that this might be helpful to a Peggy Flanagan or Keith Ellison. They're trying to fire up the left wing young members of the party. Let's see a statement from Representative Ilhan Omar. We reached out to her asking her for comment about her appearance at this event. And she said with the election just two weeks away, Representative Omar is laser focused on turning out the vote and decisively defeating Republicans up and down the ballot. early voting among people under 40 is down and we need to do everything to get young people to the polls the congresswoman knows the Democratic Party is a big tent party and she's excited to join Senator Omar for today's event to mobilize young voters and get them to vote in this critical midterm election i also want to get the statement that we got from the DFL up on the screen because that statement there uh does not say anything about Biker himself it doesn't it doesn't denounce right what he stands for and what he has said in the past the DFL statement is very different this is not a DFL sanctioned event our DFL candidates are focused on talking directly with voters about the affordability crisis created by Donald Trump and his Republican rubber stamps DFL values include respect and inclusion and i condemn this individual's comments that divide us i encourage DFLers to sign up for one more get out the vote shift took six days for the DFL chair to say behind the curtain there's a lot of tension on this issue amongst Democrats yeah well we're i mean it happens on Monday the event is sold out it's sold out very quickly it'll be on Twitch even if media doesn't isn't there to cover it it'll be interesting to see if that fires up people or if it continues to have backlash because if we're still talking about it next week because there's backlash then that's bad for democrats peggy flanagan commented on it yesterday and just said i won't be there she won't be there she didn't condemn it because she needs those voters too it's so interesting all right that's going to do it for us for now we're going to send it over to the five o'clock news we'll be back here again tomorrow starting at 4 30 we hope you'll join us then bye bye