Newt talks with Paul Gazelka, former Minnesota Senate Majority Leader, about his new book "Behind the Veil: A Stand Against Governor Tim Walz." Their discussion focuses on Tim Walz's political career, his performance during the vice-presidential debate, and his leadership abilities. Gazelka criticizes Governor Walz's handling of crises such as the George Floyd riots and the COVID-19 pandemic, describing him as indecisive and untrustworthy. They also touch on Walz's controversial policies, including tax increases, his extreme left agenda, and mismanagement of Minnesota state funds. Gazelka expresses concern over Walz's potential influence at the national level in a Harris administration.
On this episode of News World. When Vice President Kamala Harris announced her running mate in twenty twenty four would be the current governor of Minnesota, Tim Waltz, many of us did not know that much about him. Waltz was a teacher, a football coach, a congressman from Minnesota's first District, and currently serves as the governor of Minnesota, but when he hit the national stage, very little was known about his politics. In his new book about Waltz, Behind the Veil, A Stand against Governor Tim Waltz, Paul Gizelka tells the real story. Gizelka worked alongside Waltz when he served as Minnesota's Senate Majority leader from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty one. Following the vice presidential debate on Tuesday night, our conversation couldn't be time Leader. So I'm really pleased to welcome my guest, someone who knows Waltz personally, has worked with Waltz, and has great stories to tell. Paul Guzoka. Paul, welcome, and thank you for joining me in the Newts World.
Well, newt It's great to be on your show, and it's been a while since I've seen you and been with you, and so it was like one of my favorite national leaders, the Contract with America, and so really glad to be talking to you.
I have to tell you I received several emails from friends when your book came out. I ordered it right away, and I think it is probably the most revealing book about Waltz that I know of. So you have a unique position. But before we get to the book, into the past, you know, we just had this vice presidential debate, and I'm curious what your reaction was to Waltz's performance.
I think Vance slaughtered him. I mean, he looked like a deer in the headlights. And when you have to memorize what you're going to say, which is what Walls had to do versus Vance, knowing clarity what he wanted to say, you could see one candidate was very calm. The other candidate just seemed really, really nervous. And you know, so I don't think he did well. And I was surprised that he didn't even have to talk about his role as a leader in Minnesota, because there was plenty of other things that he could talk about to show his strengths.
I'm talking Vance, klust and I watched the debate, and I sort of had the feeling that there were moments where Walts just blanked out, that he wasn't sure what was going on or what to do. And I'm curious, when you dealt with him, what was your sense of him in that sense me, when you negotiated directly with him, what was that like?
You know, the negotiations. At first pre COVID, I thought he wanted to raise taxes a lot, and he wanted to do an extreme left agenda policy wise, and I had already had two years of experience as leader, and so we really really did well. We ended up lowering taxes the biggest tax cut in Minnesota history, of which he tried to take credit for at the Democrat National Convention. But once he got emergency powers, once he had to make decisions about the riots after the death of George Floyd, he froze there too, where he kind of went into this frozen he wouldn't make a decision. Well, that was the experience I had through many decisions related to COVID, and many decisions related to the riots, and then even beyond that.
There's a lot of conversation about his inability to tell the truth. And I was particularly struck last night when they asked him about Teneman Square and he started by wandering around and meandering, and the moderator came back and said, well, you know what I ask you about was why did you say you were a tenement square when you weren't there? And he said one of the great lines of the debates I've ever seen, He said, I'm just a knucklehead in your sense when you dealt with him, was he generally honest or did you have a constant challenge to know what was behind what he was saying?
Well, particularly in public, his conversation with the media was typically grandiose, exaggeration, or lying, depending on how he wanted to define it. But they didn't really fact check them a lot in Minnesota, and I mean it's coming out more later. I worked with Governor Mark Dayton. He was a Democrat before Walls, and a handshake deal was a handshake deal, and that's why we got along pretty well. It wasn't quite that with Tim Wall. They never really felt like I knew exactly where he was coming from, what he was trying to do, And that's hard to govern with somebody on the opposite side of the aisle. When that's how you feel, that.
Doesn't speak well of them. But I have to say, having negotiated for years with Bill Clinton, you always knew that you didn't know Clinton's capacity to look you in the face, tell you how totally he was with you, and three minutes later indicate that he didn't really quite mean always with you, meant always with you. It was just amazing. And I get the sense of Walts in that sense is not as sophisticated and congenital as Bill was.
Well, I think there's nobody at that level. But you know, and I put a lot of that in the book Behind the Veil, because I wanted people to see how he negotiated, how he made decisions. Once COVID hit, I had complete text strings of all of our conversations, through all of these decisions, making what I said he should do, what he ended up doing. I just didn't put him word for word in the book, just because there is some benefit of behind the scene conversations. But he's not a good leader in a crisis. The number one thing I hope people understand when a crisis hits, he's not a good leader. And then the second one is when he has power, he can't be trusted. I mean with emergency powers. Literally, I got the Democrats in Minnesota's House to agree with me against his wishes to take his powers away from him after he'd had it for almost a year and a half?
Was he year since? Occasionally he just froze up.
I'll tell you where he really froze up. A very important example of that was death of George Floyd. Was on a Monday. Everybody saw that video. I mean it was gripping. Tuesdays the riots started, and that should have been a clue. Wednesday, the mayor of Minneapolis asked walls for the National Guard, and that's when he really froze sat on his hands. Thursday, the Third Precinct police station burned down. First one and over one hundred years in America. Now I'm texting and behind the scenes, you know, where are you? He was very defensive, you know, he said, well, you should get with your buddy. He was the head of Minneapolis Police. And I tried to connect those two. Friday wells Fargo burns down. Now it's one thousand, five hundred buildings damaged that are destroyed, half a billion dollars worth of damage. Now I'm calling the White House and I'm asking them to get a message to Trump that he's going to have to intervene. And finally, on Saturday, he finally got the National Guard out at night and they turned the tide. But then, you know, as we started to go through the records, we did hearings in Minnesota Senate, and the General John Jensen of the National Guard, we asked him under testimony, could you have stopped this had you been called up sooner? And the short answer is absolutely yes. He blamed the mayor of Minneapolis. Then the Minneapolis mayor showed proof that he asked. Then he said, well, they're just a bunch of nineteen year old cooks anyway, the National Guard, so poor decision maker. And then once the decisions he made were bad, he blamed others for them, rather than what a good leader does say I was wrong. I'll take the heat.
I'm surprised by your comment about you know, nineteen year old coups, because he makes a great deal out of his own role in the Guard, and you'd have thought that he had some sense of respect for the Minnesota Guard.
You would think that, I mean, and that's you know. Even when I was pushing him, he said, well, you've never served. I was three years out of high school right after Vietnam and I didn't and I am grateful for those that do serve. But he positions himself as for rural America, and it's like that is the opposite of the direction he's going. He got caught on tape once when he was running for governor talking about northern Minnesota, rural Minnesota. He said that just a bunch of rocks and Cole's out there anyway. He might have thought it was funny, either the guard comments or the rural Minnesota, but it really is something that shows a lack of respect for those people.
Were you surprised given everything you knew when Kamala picked him.
I was very surprised. And here's what I told. Somebody said, if she picks Walls, it shows that she's a week leader. If she picked Shapiro, even though there's some pressure because he's Jewish and she had a lot of Muslim supporters, I thought, if she goes that route, it shows she's a little bit stronger leader, that she's willing to take a little bit of heat. But she picked Tim Walls, and I thought, honestly, it shocked. When I wrote the manuscript Behind the Veil, I wasn't thinking about it as something to speak against Tim Walls and don't hire him. I was just writing about my experiences in government and how to make government work in a divided state. But then suddenly he's the guy, and I've got the manuscript written, and so we rushed to get it out. I focused the second half of the book on many of his leadership decisions that really show what kind of a leader he is, and it's not good.
Why do you think she picked Walls?
My guess is she didn't realize all of this stuff that would come out about him. I think she figured he's going to represent rural America. She's got a in many swing states that are spread out throughout that area, and I don't think she knew what she got. But you know, he's a great cheerleader for her. But I don't view either one of them as strong leaders. And actually, even though I don't think he's a good leader, I think he's a stronger leader than she is. So he's going to have a lot of influence in her administration if they win. I hope that's not the case. But that's why I want people to read the book.
You sarved with three different governors, Templenty, an old friend of mine who's a Republican, and then the Democrats, Mark Dayton and Timols. How would you compare the three?
Well, both Plenty and Dayton. We're very effective, and I think people saw as very genuine. I mean, Mark Dayton was heading a different direction than where I wanted to go. But at least you knew where he was coming from. He spoke to a Chamber of Commerce event, a large dinner, and he choose out the crowd says you all need to pay more taxes. Well, that's where he was coming from, so at least he told us. But with Walls, he was just a little more COI and you didn't really know who he was or what he was trying to accomplish. So as he's trying to position himself as this moderate When he was a congressman, he was in a rural district, so his voting wrecord was moderate. But as soon as he was running for governor, he got rid of his NRA hat and every policy he tried to do was far left. We just stopped him in Minnesota, we had a one seat majority in the Senate, our Republican majority. Everything else was controlled by Democrats. The courts, seven appointed Supreme Court judges right now are appointed by Democrats, every statewide office by Democrats. So we were able to stop him. But he was trying to do all those things, and then in twenty twenty three he got the trifecta and everything that I said he was trying to do he actually did and it wasn't good.
Our mutual friend former Combers and Ben Webers said to me that once they had complete power in the House, Senate and governorship, they ran through one of the most radical state legislatic programs in the country, and that he had gone to the White House and said, this is how you do it. So if you win in twenty twenty four, this is how I can come in and really drive the country to the left very fast.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting too. He only did one debate when he ran for government the second time around, and stays away from the media. So that game plan you can see for Harrison Walls now. But to give you an idea, in twenty twenty three, then we had an eighteen billion dollars surplus because we didn't want to spend it and they didn't want tax relief. He spent all of that. He raised taxes ten billion dollars, increased spending forty percent forty percent in one year, and then now we show a structural deficit in the future for Minnesota. As far as policy, you know, he says he's four reproductive rights, but it's abortion all the way up to birth. And he eliminated two simple compromises. We had. Number one, if a young lady got pregnant, we gave them resources to help that woman be successful. He took all that money away. And then we had passed a born Alive legislative policy, which simply said, if abortion has botched that baby's alive, the doctor needs to help that baby survive. He eliminated that language too, So in the debate when he says it's not what you say, it is what vance was pointed out to him. Maybe two others clean energy they passed by twenty fortyilities have to have one hundred percent renewable energy or carbon free. It's impossible in Minnesota. We don't have enough. Nuclear wind doesn't work when it's twenty two below or colder. Solar if it's not sunny, and so it doesn't work, but they did it anyway. And then one last one, when he brags about paid family leave, they say, if you're an employer with one employee, you have to pay this tax. The employee does too, and that employee can have up to twenty weeks off every single year. You know, they have to be eligible. But I can envision some employees may milk that system and it doesn't work. That's why I say extreme, because he really was.
You're describing on energy, something which is happening all over the industrial world, and in places like Germany, they're beginning to collapse because it's so clearly he's not sustainable. Why do you think when the experts come in and they explain, you're not going to have an electric and we need more electricity, not less, because of a huge computing power for artificial intelligence. Why do these guys not notice that there is a real world.
I can only assume that they think their base loves that rhetoric. But it's their job, it's all of our jobs to help people connect the dots between what works and what doesn't work, and how fast we do it. I'm not against clean energy. I'm not against electric cars, but let the market drive it. I think Jade Vance was brilliant last night when he said, if you really care about clean energy, let's bring those jobs back to America, where we do it cleaner than anybody else. But every one of those issues, I feel like they're pandering to their base. For example, during the riots in Minnesota, one of the reasons I think he sat on his hands is because a big number of those protesters were their base, and so he didn't want to turn them off. So he's trying to make a decision, threading the needle between them protecting the state. But in the end, the state is the one that lost.
Several friends close to has They now live in Minneapolis, and one of them lives in the neighborhood where the police station was burned down, where the local store was burned down. It went from being a really nice, middle class neighborhood being a disaster in four days.
I used to call Minneapolis in Saint Paul's Shining Cities. I mean, they were far safer once the riots began. What followed was a very anti police movement, of which Governor Walls was leading. I just wouldn't let him do all these anti police policies. But the Minneapolis police force went from eight hundred members down to about three hundred and fifty, and they had wanted to grow to twelve hundred. So they were just not enough. They couldn't do their job. They weren't appreciated, and Tim Walls was not standing up for him. During the riots, I went to the basement of the Capitol where all of these police groups were meeting. They were staging to go take back the streets. He never showed up there. He never ever thanked them for the risk that they were taking to take our streets back. And carjackings went up to almost I think it was like two a day at the peak in Minneapolis, when it had been much more rare. And so all of that is because of bad leadership.
Most of my life going to the cities, you saw it as one of the nicest and cleanest and safest places in America, and all of a sudden you have entire neighborhoods that are dangerous.
Yeah, you know, And I think a big part of that is if you don't appreciate the police and you make it difficult for them to do their job, and then if they make a mistake, you put the hammer down, which is what Walls and Attorney General Keith Ellison did in Minnesota. You're not going to have the same kind of impact that you wanted to have to keep your cities safe. I'm a big believer in backing the men and women in blue, and they like us. If there's a bad apple in their group, they want to pluck that bad apple out too. But you don't throw away all the good police officers and the work they do for us.
At a state wide level, you're the largest center of Somali refugees in the country. What's their impact on the politics and governance of Minnesota.
Well, they vote almost completely Democrats. It's about one hundred thousand people. I will say when I was in office, I was trying to make inroads into their communities because many of their beliefs line up more on the Republican side. I heard from one Democrat legislator that was ousted by another Democrat challenger who was Somali that he thought that there was in that race. It wasn't enough in the Trump election to make a difference in Minnesota, but there is influence. Congressman Omar is from a district that is heavily populated with the Somalis, and even when she's challenged by the Democrat side, she seems to hold her own.
One of the places I would say, rivaling the mishandling of the riots was the weird stuff that Waltz did during COVID. You say this in your book, he should in order that said you could have up to fifty people in a bar and ten people in a church. I mean, what is the rationale for that?
There is no rationale. I think what it showed was he doesn't give a lot of weight to the church community and the need for spiritual connections. And I mean that was like the last straw for some of these church leaders. My wife said, let's just do church in bars. We're going to disregard it. So I was doing zoom meetings with the church, and I put this in the book Behind the Veil because I wanted people to understand some of the dynamics of actually having to work against him. And these church leaders they wanted to work with the governor, any governor, but they finally reached a point where they said, we're going to open up anyway. We don't care what you say. I think it was their constitutional right. If you have a Walmart open with five hundred people, then you have to have a church open. That brought him back to the table. It all happened behind the scenes. But then he finally agreed to two hundred and fifty people. But you couldn't do funerals, You couldn't do weddings. But suddenly the George Floyd funeral, Well, we can do that one. So he picked and choosed winners and losers. That's where I say he didn't handle power well because he thought I can decide all of this. It was like king like powers. I remember behind the scenes he said I'm going to buy a morgue and I said, you don't need a more Why don't you lease the building? Why don't you go at freezer trucks? And that's where it's nice to have the documentation. He went ahead and did it. He said, fifty thousand people are going to die. At the same time. I looked at the same data, the same science, and I said it's going to be five thousand people. And a year later it was five thousand people. And we never used the more these decision making in crisis he looks at the data wrong or he freezes. And now let's say he's second command of the United States of America. You do not get do overs against Russia or China, or Iran or North Korea. And that's what you're bringing to the table if you're electing him.
I read somewhere that at the point where he had closed the churches, he allowed all of the Americans to open on the grounds that retail therapy was very important. I love the concept of retail therapy.
Yeah, and that's why I say he really undervalued the church. And you know, he used to scripture last night, and I kind of smiled because when I was in negotiations with him, I felt all of these negotiation strategies and I just smiled because I knew where I wanted to go. But one of them was occasionally quoting me a scripture because he knows I'm a follower of Christ, and somehow that's going to sway me into his rhetoric. But I didn't think he valued the church enough. Otherwise, certainly they would have had at least fifty when Bars had fifty.
In a sense that he meets, but he doesn't necessarily listen.
I think that's a really good way to say it, because he'd often say I hear you, Paul, but it was like, you don't hear me. For example, when he's talking about fifty thousand people will die, and he took the personal protection equipment away from surgical centers so they couldn't make a profit. He did leave abortion centers open. But I said, Governor, are you looking at the data? I said, are you looking to New York? Because in New York, I said, they have four times the population of Minnesota, but they don't have the beds being used that you say are going to be in Minnesota. But he just I hear you, but he didn't listen, you know. So that's where it was very frustrated under emergency powers because as an almost equal leader Senate majority leader versus governor, he had to listen to me. Under emergency powers, he could take it under consideration, but he got to do whatever he wanted to do.
On medical issues when you have things as famous as the Mayo Clinic, that he certainly was surrounded by people who had a pretty sophisticated understanding of the issues.
Yeah, you know, and I think the University of Minnesota, the Mayo Clinic didn't have all the answers on it. I think it's sort of like I think they were looking at worst case scenario, and I was trying to weigh out the economic problems, the drug addiction problems, the foreclosure problems. So I tried to see it bigger. And when you'd see it that way, you're willing to take some risks, because there's other risks of not taking those risks. So I realized that people were all over the board on COVID. You know, That's why I don't focus a lot on that issue. But his leadership decisions that one the riots, one other one I'll give you, And I put this in the book. Behind the Veil as well, is there's a statue of Christopher Columbus was a statue right next to our capital, and Mike Farcia, who was part of the American Indian Movement back in the seventies, put out a statement He's going to tear that statue down in the afternoon, and the governor saw it. He was fully aware of it, and he put one highway patrol out next to that statue. As a group of fifty to one hundred people came up to that statue. Mike Foresia had a rope in his hand, standing right next to the highway patrol person. That person, the highway patrol person then goes into the Capitol where there's scores and scores of highway patrol. Mike Parcia throws a rope around the neck and pulls this you down. And I was a mile away, having either lunch ORed in I can't remember what it was, a meal. I got up there right away and it was already on a flatbeg truck being hauled away. And I thought, this is an assumption now, but I believe he knew it. I believe he looked the other way and let a mob do it. And that is the worst kind of leadership decision I can possibly imagine.
This whole notion of catering to the hard left, which of course fits perfectly in a Harris Waltz ticket, because she was sending out recommendations to give money to an organization in Minneapolis that was bailing out the rioters. You have Harris in favor of putting the rioters back on the street, while you have Waltz trying not to use the National Guard to stop them. I mean in some ways. It's a perfect ticket.
If you want to go straight far left and ruin the country we have. That is why I've been so aggressive. I'm normally fairly mild mannered. I like government to work. I try to build compromise, but sometimes you have to confront and that's what I'm doing in this case against Tim Wallas. I mean, putting the book out, it definitely made a statement, you know, and I hope people buy it. I mean, just go to Amazon and type in Behind the Veil and you can find it. But people need to be aware of what kind of leader he is. They saw last night that he's a terrible debater, but what is he like when he makes decisions.
One of the things I've been working on is the whole issue of corruption in government, because the average American is very convinced that large parts of the government are just playing corrupt. It's not that they're liberal or conservative or they're inefficient, they're just corrupt. And you have in the Walls administration a perfect example in an organization called Feeding Our Future, which apparently stole two hundred and fifty million dollars.
Yeah, and that's just one of multiple groups that took money we had another program to pay frontline workers during COVID Bonus, and that one they abused. They gave out over two hundred million dollars to people that didn't qualify. And then there's Medicaid issues, all total more than a half a billion dollars of fraud and waste. And so we brought in the OLA, the Office of Legislator Auditor. It's nonpartisan, and they were pounding Governor Wilson his administration for not being responsible for the dollars that are coming into Minnesota. And they just made excuses. I mean, it's excuses about the riots, AND's excuses about everything rather than just taking responsibility. But waste and fraud is a big deal. I mean, obviously, you know, our federal government is far beyond Minnesota, and if they're in charge, I don't think he's going to do any better there. I think it'll be worse.
Which gets made is sort of my final big topic, which is if whe Harrison Walter do win, what would worry you the most?
The biggest thing for me is if we have a huge national crisis, particularly against a foreign country. I don't think he is even close to ready. I think his ability to decide. First of all, it's too slow and oftentimes, you know, you have to make decisions on the fly where you're gathering information, and his compass doesn't point to the right decision. And I do think if Harris is the president, I think she's weaker. Yet, so if he's who she's leaning on for advice, I think it really brings us in the wrong direction. I mean, I don't think he has a good grasp of what it takes to make money, you know, I just don't think he's business savvy at all. I don't think he understands how hard it is to make money, and so doesn't really I don't think he really cares about the taxpayer in the way I think he should. And so those are all other issues that I care about, but the biggest one is making a decision in a crisis. I don't think he's ready.
Well, if you look at the war in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine, the threat to Taiwan, the southern border, there are a lot of places where you'd better have a strong leader because we're in real trouble.
Harris has proven that she's not a strong leader. I mean, she was borders are and it's terrible. Wallace is proven he's not a strong leader, and so two week leaders doesn't make a strong leader, you know, versus Trump. Trump's not a good job. A lot of people don't like his personality and that he's abrasive. But I'll tell you what, I'd rather have a strong leader than a week leader any day.
So this is probably a little bit of a silly thing to end on, but I can't resist. Can you explain the whole coach thing? I mean, was he a coach? They're running around with her calling him coach. Oh, I'm so glad coach is here. But I keep hearing that he was like a volunteer.
He was an assistant coach. He had a duy and Nebraska, and I don't really focus on that much, but I think that's part of the reason he was only an assistant coach. The assistant coach doesn't make the decisions. He didn't make decisions in the National Guard. What I tell people's look, he was a teacher, so during COVID, he should have known that you should never keep kids out of school for a long long time. He was an assistant coach, he should have known you never should put a mask on kids playing basketball. I mean, how silly, how dumb is that he was a National Guard member. He should have never cut down the National Guard his nineteen year old cooks. He should have known that they could do their job.
You know.
So every area that he brags about, I look at it, I say, well, you should have known that. And I don't dislike Tim Walls. I don't think he's the right guy. And I'm one of the few people that knows him really, really well behind the scenes, and I say, I'm the reference that says don't hire him. That's the reference I am.
It's okay to have him over for iced tea and cookies, but let's not give him any kind of power.
We promised each other before he was VP candidate that we'd get a beer sometime, because you know, you have those epic battles. Governor Dayton still calls me Planny and I when to work Florida. We get together. But you know, maybe I'm a little bit too strong now where that isn't going to happen. But I don't dislike him. I just think he's the wrong guy for the job.
Oh thank you for joining me. Having an eyewitness who's actually worked with him is very helpful. Your new book, Behind the Veil, A Stand against Governor Tim Waltz is terrific. I highly recommend it. It's available now on Amazon, and our listeners can keep up with what you're doing on your website, Gauzeka dot com. So thank you so much for being.
With us newt It was an incredible honor. Thank you for what you're doing. I love that you are continuing to just lead the way. Thank you so much.
Thank you to my guest Paul Guzoka. You can get a link to buy his new book, Behind the Veil, A Stand against Governor Tim Waltz on our show page at neworld dot com. New World is produced by Gangrad three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Fendall. Special thanks to the team at Gingrich three sixty. If you've been enjoying New World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of news World can sign up for my three free weekly columns at gingrichtree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm NEWT Gingrich. This is Newtworld.