Photograph Source: SWinxy – CC BY 4.0

The Republicans have been so successful at hyping the fraud around the Feeding Our Future child nutrition program in Minnesota that even liberal Democrats reflexively all say “fraud” when they discuss Minnesota. Apparently, it is news to even well-informed types that Trump and his sycophants lie about liberal politicians, especially successful ones like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Rather than wallow in contrition over the fraud that took place, it would be worth spending more time in Reality Land. No one should ever apologize for fraud. It is a serious crime, especially when the money was designated for a nutrition program designed to help children from low- and moderate-income families.

But we need a sense of proportion. Fraud in government programs will never be zero. As with the private sector (can you say Enron?), people will try to cheat. And they do a lot of cheating on their taxes, ripping us off to the tune of more than $600 billion a year, according to the I.R.S.

How much did the bad guys in Minnesota (yeah, some were Somali immigrants – really bad) steal from us? The best figure I could find puts it at around $250 million. That’s not trivial, but this was a pandemic-era program, started in Trump’s first term, where the priority was to get money out quickly.

GAO put the amount of fraud in pandemic programs at over $300 billion. Minnesota has a bit less than 2 percent of the country’s population. This means that Minnesota should have had around $6 billion in fraud if it was keeping up with the rest of the country. Looks like Governor Walz is lagging far behind in the fraud category.

To be fair, there has been fraud in other government programs in Minnesota. While there have been wild claims about the amount of fraud in Minnesota’s Medicaid program, the evidence that has been made public puts it in the $60-$90 million range. This is over several years, in a program that spends well over $900 billion a year nationally. So again, there is not much evidence that Minnesota is especially bad in the fraud category.

Trumpian Corruption

People naturally get upset when they see scammers ripping off the government. People also get upset when the politicians they put in office rip off the public. In his second term, Trump has decided to use the White House as a platform for profit in a way that would previously have been unimaginable.

He created a crypto coin as an avenue for bribery, as did his wife. He also secured a huge movie contract for his wife, also an avenue for bribery. He has sold pardons to people convicted of just about every offense imaginable. He has steered government contracts to companies in which his kids have a stake. He has repeatedly engaged in insider trading, buying or selling shares in companies in advance of actions that will affect their price. And he even has decided to wholesale insider trading, selling advance access to his Truth Social posts that might move markets.

Past presidents have put all their assets in a blind trust where they don’t have direct knowledge of where they are invested. They have usually required their top aides to do the same. Under Trump, top aides are not expected to put their assets in a blind trust. In fact, some officials, like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, have immediate family members (his sons) operating businesses that can directly benefit from their inside knowledge.

The new approach seems to have paid off quite well. According to Forbes (reprinted by Grok) Trump’s personal wealth has increased by roughly $2.5 billion since he took office. For his family as a whole, the gains have been around $5 billion. Forbes put the gains to Howard Lutnick’s family at $4.1 billion.

The Scorecard: Trumpian Corruption Swamps Minnesota Fraud

The numbers here are clearly somewhat speculative, but there can be little doubt that the money at stake with the Trump administration’s corruption swamps any fraud associated with government programs in Minnesota. (I didn’t even go through the rest of the cabinet and other top officials, virtually all of whom seem to be moonlighting with side ventures.) It is understandable that Republicans, pushing their racist tropes, would scream hysterically about fraud, some of which was done by Black immigrants. But why do liberals run and hide instead of fighting back with the real story?

We lost a promising politician and effective governor because of this failure. Even more importantly, if Democrats run and hide every time Republicans yell “Black people, fraud,” they will lose. Because Republicans always yell “Black people, fraud.” Winning elections will require effective ways to fight back.

This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.