In Minnesota, The GOP Is Running On Bigotry And Against Masks And Wayfair

 

Minnesota is closing in on 100,000 COVID cases and will get there before election day.

Despite a significant and ongoing investment in the state by the Trump campaign, the margin between Trump and Biden continues to grow-- against Trump. The Real Cleat Politics polling average shows Biden up 10.2%-- 51.6% to 41.4%, which has got to be a big letdown for Trump since Hillary barely beat him in 2016-- 1,367,716 (46.44%) to 1,322,951 (44.92%). On the kind of electoral map Trump understands better than numbers, he looks like he could have won the state because he did so well in rural areas and the map is pretty red:

The Minnesota poll by Langer that came out yesterday-- from the Washington Post and ABC News-- shows Trump losing spectacularly among likely voters-- 41% to Biden's 57%. That's a 16 point margin.

Maybe Trump thinks the way to flatten that curve-- since he sure ain't flattening' the other one-- is to use his own brand of bigotry, racism and misogyny to attack Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Minnesotans, however, enjoy a good fight and Ilhan sure bested Trump on their latest match. She delivered a pretty devastating comeback to The Donald after his dog-whistle attack on her Somali origins at his Pennsylvania rally Tuesday night. Trump’s racist fans jeered Omar’s name when he mentioned it outside Pittsburgh, apparently making him feel bold enough to say: "She’s telling us how to run our country. How did you do where you came from? How was your country doing?"

Jamie Ross for the Daily Beast: "Omar, who was born in Somalia but left as a kid and is a naturalized U.S. citizen, hit back: 'Firstly, this is my country and I am a member of the House that impeached you. Secondly, I fled civil war when I was 8. An 8-year-old doesn’t run a country even though you run our country like one.' As the pièce de résistance, she posted the Mean Girls gif of Regina George asking the pertinent question: 'Why are you so obsessed with me?'"

Minnesota elected a Democratic governor and a Democratic state House, where they told 75 seats to the Republicans' 55. (There are also 4 "New Republicans.") But the State Senate is a problem. The GOP has 35 seats to the Democrats' 32. The state party's and the DLCC's efforts to flip the Senate are being helped by the Minnesota Republican Party is veering off-track and into conspiracy theory and fascism territory.

Writing for the Star-Tribune, Stephen Montemayor reported that "At least a half-dozen Minnesota Republicans running for state legislative seats in November have promoted the sprawling, false QAnon conspiracy that claims Satanists and pedophiles run the government and that COVID-19 is part of a plot to steal the election. Once a fringe fiction, QAnon is quickly seeping into mainstream Republican politics as scores of GOP candidates across the country express support for it. Among them are six candidates endorsed by the Minnesota Republican Party for state House and Senate seats from the Iron Range to the metro suburbs. In some cases, Minnesota candidates have used official social media pages for their campaigns to post slogans in support of QAnon, which the FBI has warned is a conspiracy theory that could inspire domestic terrorism or violence. Some posts include references to a 'Great Awakening' or 'The Storm,' a prophesied reckoning in which elected officials, journalists and other members of 'the Deep State' are rounded up for imprisonment or execution."

One of them, Julie Dupré, the official Republican Party challenger to state Sen. Melisa Franzen in the suburbs southwest of the Twin Cities, called QAnon "a really great information source."

In Trump's first public comments on Q-Anon, he said-- conflating himself with the country-- "I heard that these are people that love our country."

Melissa Moore, a state delegate for the GOP party since 2016, is running for a House seat that covers St. Louis Park and Hopkins. She has posted references to the Great Awakening and popular QAnon phrases like “WWG1WGA,” an acronym for “Where we go one, we go all” on her campaign Facebook page. She also maintains two Twitter accounts, one of which describes her as a #DigitalSoldier and includes frequent QAnon references. That account has more than 1,000 followers and follows 1,450 other accounts-- many of which support QAnon.

Moore did not respond to messages seeking comment. In a recent AP interview, she said she liked following QAnon, describing it as “an exciting movement that opens our minds to different possibilities of what’s going on, of what’s really happening in our world today.”

In a since-deleted video shot outside a church and later posted to Twitter last December, Gary Heyer, the GOP-endorsed candidate for a Minnesota House seat in Bloomington, described “inviting all of the churchgoers to partake in the great awakening.” In the video, preserved by the nonprofit research group Media Matters for America, congregants drove past a sign with “Q” and “Patriots Unite” emblazoned on its front. The sign included a disclaimer that it was paid for by “Gary Heyer for Congress” and included a hyperlink that now redirects to the website affiliated with Heyer’s state House campaign.

On Twitter, Heyer follows nearly 80 accounts that express support for QAnon in their handles or bios. Heyer, who campaigned for Ron Paul in 2012 and traveled as a delegate to that year’s Republican National Convention, declined to comment on QAnon in an interview.

But he predicted that herd immunity would be a pathway out of the COVID-19 pandemic and vowed that, if elected, he would advocate for Minnesota to become the financial technology capital of the U.S. Heyer advocates for cryptocurrency and said he is “working with some different folks right now but I can’t really discuss all the details.”

Julie Buria, a Mountain Iron City Council member, is running for a state House seat. Buria sparked controversy this summer when she posted a graphic image comparing the Holocaust to Minnesota’s response to the pandemic. Minnesota GOP party leaders later said that Buria had apologized but, days later at a council meeting, Buria claimed that she was forced to apologize and did nothing wrong.

Earlier this year, according to images reviewed by the Star Tribune, Buria tweeted several references to QAnon. She tweeted a May 30 report from a QAnon site purporting to show “Black Patriots” protecting a lone police officer from “Antifa Terrorists.” In April, she retweeted a woman who wrote “If only people knew how many Satanists are actually in the government” and “Pedophilia is going to bring the whole house of cards down.”

Elizabeth Bangert, a child-care center owner running for the state Senate in the Mankato area, frequently posts videos recorded from inside her vehicle to her Minnesota Citizen Lobbyist page on Facebook. Bangert has also shared posts in support of QAnon and “the great awakening” on the social media platform, according to a screenshot of her personal account shared with the Star Tribune. About a dozen of the 56 accounts she follows on Twitter allude to QAnon.

Bangert did not respond to requests for comment. In her Facebook videos, references to human trafficking-- a frequent theme of QAnon messaging-- are prevalent.

“I’m going to go ahead and tell you that if you think that some form of T-R-A-F-F-I-C-K-I-N-G isn’t happening in America or hasn’t been concealed for decades if not longer, then you’ve been duped,” Bangert said in a July 13 video claiming the Wayfair online home furnishings store is involved in child sex-trafficking.

In a statement, a Wayfair spokesperson said, “There is, of course, no truth to these claims.”

Bangert also believes in the Operation Lockstep Theory that COVID-19 is a plot by global elites to control the population. The theory distorts a 2010 Rockefeller Foundation report on how the world could be affected by scenarios that included a global pandemic. It falsely frames the report as an operation manual of sorts to create a police state via a manufactured virus.

Other videos have seen her proudly flout the state’s face mask requirement in public spaces.

In a July 5 tweet in response to Walz asking Minnesotans to don masks over the holiday weekend, Bangert wrote: “You will be removed from office for your treasonous acts, for our safety.”

Joe Thalman, running for a Minnesota House seat that covers parts of the southwest metro suburbs, concluded his remarks at a candidate forum hosted by the League of Women Voters in Bloomington last month by saying, “We’re seeking truth and justice and where we go one, we go all,” the QAnon catch phrase.

The Minnesota Republican Party did not respond to messages seeking comment.