Hey everyone, we've got breaking news here. Governor Tim Walls of Minnesota has just said that he is not going to run for a third term for governor amidst a major scandal in Minnesota.

And so I've got Lauren Egan and Jonathan Cohn here with me to break it down because this has kind of like a bunch of different implications.

Normally a guy running for governor for a third term in a solidly blue state wouldn't be that

big of a deal.

Wouldn't be something we'd go live for.

But not only was Tim Walz, the vice president, not only is he sitting at the center of a

scandal, not only has Minnesota had a number of things that have happened, but the interactions

with the president and sort of like they're at a middle of a firestorm with right-wing media

around this fraud investigation.

And also it looks like maybe Amy Klobuchar is going to be the person to step in and run for governor, which then opens a second Senate seat in Minnesota.

So like, it has big stuff.

Okay.

So where should we start?

Should we start with the way that the fraud, it appears, and maybe, because I don't know the answer to this.

And which one of you can answer it?

It appears to me that the fraud investigation and the fact that this has become a national issue is the reason he is stepping down, that it has just become too big for him to weather. Is that correct, Lauren? I think that it's like the last straw. I mean, it's interesting to me because if we think back to the beginning of the year, Tim Walls was really trying to position himself as this party leader. Like, I don't know if you remember he was going out,

doing all these town halls outside of Minnesota, like trying to sort of position himself as this

guy who's like doing this listening tour. Maybe he was going to run for president in 2028. He was

in the mix. And then just like slowly throughout last year, that kind of started to

erode. And I think the shooting of Melissa Hortman played a big role in that. Trump kind of

going after him, attacking him, sharing conspiracy theories that linked him to that killing.

And I think it just slowly started to erode.

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