Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz broke MAGA brains for the second time in a month — and he wasn’t even calling them “weird” this time. He was making fun of himself.
Prior to winning the Democratic veepstakes, Walz mocked the hypocrisy of the GOP’s “freedom” branding despite its support for abortion bans, educational censorship and hostility to LGBTQ people. When he called them “weird” for that, pundits from both the party of Trump and the MAGA-adjacent faux-center gasped in horror and suggested that in slamming Donald Trump and JD Vance, he’d attacked half the country.
More recently, they lost their minds about Walz making a completely forgettable quip — calling it a joke gives it way too much credit — about how he eats “white guy tacos.” What’s a white guy taco to Walz? “Pretty much ground beef and cheese.” Then he mumbled another throwaway line about black pepper being as hot a spice as his region prefers.
To some of the toughest-talking, eff-your-feelings MAGA pundits, it was a hate crime.
These quotes are from a campaign video where Walz and Vice President Kamala Harris do their best attempt at a buddy banter clip — the kind of humanizing campaign advertising that’s so normal it’s hardly ever noticed. Since at least the dawn of television, presidential and vice presidential candidates have tried to sell themselves as just regular people, not highly ambitious politicians working together to secure the most powerful position in the world. That’s all this video was. An advertisement.
But to some of the toughest-talking, eff-your-feelings MAGA pundits, it was a hate crime. It was proof that Walz is a fraud and possibly a traitor to his race.
Ben Shapiro, generally regarded as a high-level conservative public intellectual, didn’t find Walz’s dumb Midwestern dad joke funny. The author of tweets accusing Colin Powell of being an “affirmative action general” responded with: “See, folks, it’s funny that white people hate spices! Not racist at all! Just funny!” Then he added a fact check about Europeans fighting wars over the spice trade. Shapiro later devoted an entire segment on his show to making these same points.
Then came the sleuths who insisted Walz was also a liar. A famous Pizzagate propagator uncovered the awful truth: Walz won a recipe contest! And it was taco-related! To prove he had the goods, the Pizzagate guy shared a screenshot of the ingredients Walz used: paprika, chili powder, onion powder, garlic powder, olive oil. And mild green chiles and a bottle of medium taco sauce.
The dish was called “Tim’s Turkey Taco Tot Hotdish.” It’s based on ground turkey, cheese, sour cream and sweet corn. It’s served with tater tots. It is literally a Midwestern meat and potatoes casserole with a Taco Bell kids menu level of spice.
Though that recipe is hardly proof that Walz is a secret spice guy, one right-wing influencer with a huge audience claimed, “He has to appeal to the white guilt crowd now so he is changing his position on spices.” Even Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., got in on the Walz Tacogate pile-on, slamming Walz for denying his true seasoning legacy.
It is literally a Midwestern meat and potatoes casserole with a Taco Bell kids menu level of spice.
Foreign policy writer Nicholas Grossman summarized this curious phenomenon well: “Right-wing podcasters: Oh so when I make mean-spirited disparaging comments about other races it’s wrong, but when Tim Walz makes a mild dad joke at his own race’s expense it’s ok? How is that fair? I’m the victim here. Yes, again.” A political science professor described their expressed outrage as “ambient victimhood.”
In the current state of the culture wars, the MAGA right and its enablers have hair-trigger offense reactions. And some of them are openly debasing themselves as their fragility leads them to viciously lash out at their liberal tormentors.
An “anti-woke” account with nearly 3 million followers posted a short video showing Harris’ stepdaughter, Ella Emhoff, with her arm draped casually around her dad during the Democratic National Convention. The caption read: “This is Kamala’s family. Beyond parody.” I honestly can’t fathom what they’re mad about. Ella’s tattoos? Her short hair? That she and her father appear genuinely relaxed around each other? Ann Coulter — inarguably one of the meanest people in the political discourse for decades — was triggered by a photo of Walz’s son, Gus, shedding tears of joy as his father accepted the Democratic nomination for vice president. She wrote, “Talk about weird…” Again, what is she offended by? Is the image of a young male publicly expressing deep emotion part of a feminist conspiracy to lower the population or something? I mean, even Shapiro conceded the moment was “really quite nice.” Coulter went too far even by MAGA standards of decorum and hence deleted the X post attacking the teenager, but this is what the anti-snowflake movement has become: people who flip out over a politician’s anodyne self-deprecating joke and Democrats’ children doing normal things when caught on candid camera. This is late-stage MAGA. Some of the most vicious people in politics and commentary are unironically freaking out over people doing normal, apolitical things. They are irrationally hypersensitive, proclaiming their victimhood as they scour for woke scolds and creeping communism under every sofa cushion. It’s grievance culture of the right-wing variety. And it’s very weird.
Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and opinion columnist for MS NOW, often covering free speech, civil liberties and extremism. He was previously the senior opinion editor for The Daily Beast and a politics columnist for Business Insider. 
