Trump throws support behind Michele Tafoya while Tafoya distances herself from him – InForum
ST. PAUL — President Donald Trump is telling voters to get behind Minnesota’s Republican candidate for U.S. Senate.
“You have to vote for Michele Tafoya,” he said at a rally in Ohio on Monday, Oct. 12, adding that she is a “very respected person.” Tafoya responded to the endorsement at an unrelated news conference Tuesday, saying she “heard about that.”
“Look, this campaign is about bringing all Minnesotans together — whether they voted for President Trump or whether they voted for Kamala Harris or whether they didn’t vote at all,” Tafoya said. “I want all Minnesotans to come together.”
Lexi Byler, a spokesperson for Tafoya’s opponent, DFL Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, said in a statement Tuesday that Tafoya spent “all year auditioning for Donald Trump’s endorsement and yesterday she got it.”
“No wonder he calls her ‘very respected’— she’s in lockstep with him on everything,” Byler said. “To be clear — Trump has lost Minnesota three times, and Michele Tafoya is about to be number four.”
Trump has endorsed all of Minnesota’s
Republican congressional delegation.
He hasn’t endorsed a candidate for governor after his pick ahead of the primary, former
lost to House Speaker Lisa Demuth.
The president’s support comes after the former sports broadcaster has recently distanced herself from the president, specifically regarding the
Tafoya distanced herself further from the administration Tuesday. She said Operation Metro Surge was handled “abysmally” and that former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was “appropriately” dismissed.
“I also think that Governor Walz, Lieutenant Governor Flanagan, and the mayors in our cities had a massive failure of leadership by not allowing our law enforcement to protect anyone involved with that,” she said. “So it was a massive failure on two levels.”
She also stood firm in her identity as a pro-choice Republican.
“I am a pro-choice Republican. I have said that from the day I entered this race, and I have taken a lot of heat from my party over this. I believe the woman has a right to choose up to 12 weeks, certainly, and that is where I stand,” she said. “I wonder if there’s any single issue that Peggy Flanagan has taken that is not in lockstep with the extreme left of her party.”
Tafoya outlined her public safety plans
in recent weeks involving Somali youth in Twin Cities suburbs — one of those incidents was in Edina, where Tafoya is from.
She proposed a five-point plan, which includes disrupting gang activity online; partnering with the U.S. Attorney’s Office to achieve “faster federal prosecutions”; and fostering more cooperation between local, state and federal law enforcement.
Tafoya said Minnesota has a crime crisis, “particularly Somali gang violence,” but said Trump’s recent rhetoric toward the Somali community was “not appropriate.”
“We do not have to choose between, on the one hand, scapegoating people, and in the other, ignoring this problem. Those are not our only options,” she said.
Mary Murphy joined Forum Communications in October 2024 as the Minnesota State Correspondent. She can be reached by email at mmurphy@forumcomm.com.
