‘Get the hell out of here’: Rep. Tom Emmer’s post-election crashout

On Nov. 10, House Republicans voted 103-76 to keep Rep. Tom Emmer as whip. That makes him the No. 2 Republican in the new minority. At the press conference afterward, he told Democrats that “come January 3, 2027, you will regret ever putting your name on a ballot.” 

That night he told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that “prices are too high and wages are not high enough. And I think we need to listen to the American people.” The American people had just handed Democrats both chambers of Congress.

Over the next two days he gave four more: Fox & Friends, Newsmax, Matt Gaetz and Benny Johnson. 

MN-06 Watch transcribed all five. None were with Minnesota outlets. 

‘Get the hell out of here’

Emmer conducted a 23-minute interview with Benny Johnson — who was caught up in a Russian influence operation in 2024, though he said he was none the wiser. He also accused Emmer’s fellow Minnesotan Alex Pretti, who was disarmed and then shot dead by federal officers, of attempting to commit “mass murder.”

Emmer began the Nov. 12 interview by saying: “I’ve got basically the Somali civil war that’s come to the state of Minnesota.”

Johnson asked what Somali culture had brought to Minnesota and listed “rampant fraud,” “rampant crime” and “the humiliation of electing these Somalis,” and called it “such a scar on the face of Minnesota.” 

Emmer, who early in his congressional career defended Somali immigrants’ right to live in Minnesota, answered: “It really is.” He then said that more than 80% of Somalis “are still collecting on Minnesota welfare programs.” Census data roughly back the number: about 9 in 10 Somali Minnesotans receive some form of public assistance, most often Medicaid. But those programs are built to cover low-wage workers, and Somali Minnesotans are more likely to be in the labor force than Minnesotans overall. Many work in jobs that pay too little to keep them off those programs. Receiving benefits, PolitiFact noted, doesn’t mean someone isn’t working. Emmer also described Somali residents calling relatives elsewhere: “You’re never going to believe how gullible these people are… you can rip them off until the sun comes up the next day.”

On Rep. Ilhan Omar, he said: “She’s said in the past that she’s here to represent Somalia. Well, why don’t you go back to Somalia?… And if you don’t want to be an American, then you should just get the hell out of here.” That claim comes from a January 2024 speech Omar gave in Somali. A court-registered interpreter said the translation that critics circulated was wrong, and USA Today rated the “loyalty to Somalia” version false. Emmer used that same translation at the time to demand an ethics investigation. Nearly three years later, he’s still repeating it. He doesn’t seem to care that it’s been fact-checked and rated false. What would it take for him to stop?

It isn’t the first time he has told Somali Minnesotans to leave. On June 25, at a Faith & Freedom Coalition event in Washington, Emmer said: “Celebrate your culture, I don’t care — Italian, Polish, you know, Somali — but they don’t assimilate, and if they don’t assimilate, then they should go the hell back to where they came from.” Omar replied that she had “assimilated all the way to Congress.”

Johnson asked whether Emmer would support a ban on burqas “here in America or at least in Minnesota.” 

Emmer said America should have a dress code: “There should be no burqas. I’m sorry. If it covers up your identity, there should be nothing like that allowed.” 

He dismissed religious objections: “It is pure stupidity to say, oh, well, you know, this is what they believe.” 

Minnesota law already makes it a misdemeanor to conceal your identity in public. It exempts religious dress, so what Emmer is describing is removing a religious protection, an interesting contradiction from someone who has worried aloud about government interfering with his own faith. He told The Hill he voted for the Respect for Marriage Act because of its religious-liberty provisions, fearing Attorney General Keith Ellison could go after his kids’ Catholic school for “not teaching all forms of marriage.” When it’s his church, government should stay out. When it’s a Muslim woman’s clothing, the religious reason is “pure stupidity.”

His reasoning: “I want to know who the heck you are. It’s a matter of safety and security.” In February, when Democrats demanded that ICE agents identify themselves, Emmer called it “intellectually inconsistent” because Democrats oppose voter ID. Whether his standard of knowing who someone is applies to federal agents, he hasn’t said. I have asked. It’s among the dozens of questions I’ve put to his office this year, without a single response. 

‘Corrupt to the core’

On Nov. 10, Ingraham asked Emmer what was going on in Minnesota and answered her own question: “Fraud is like the biggest industry you have right now there.” Emmer didn’t push back, even though his home state features 18 Fortune 500 companies and the highest wages in the Midwest. 

He answered by referring to Minnesota Democrats, though he didn’t name them: “When you elect a Somali fraudster who ran a daycare and was guilty of fraud again in St. Cloud,” an attorney general “caught on tape essentially being bribed,” and “a gal who stood by Tim Walz’s side while the fraud was going on.” (More on this in a moment.) 

Two days later, on Johnson’s show, he went further: “Either fraud doesn’t matter or our election process in Minnesota is corrupt to the core. I’ll let you decide.” Later: “Something’s wrong with the election process in Minnesota, which I think we’re going to hear more about in the future.” That’s the election that just reelected him. He won by 11.5 points, down from 25 in 2024.

Minnesota ranked top in the country in MIT’s 2024 Election Performance Index, which measures election administration. After every election, the secretary of state and the counties conduct an exhaustive post-election review process, including hand-counting some precincts in each county, and the results year after year are nearly identical to machine tabulations that produce the official results. 

After Republicans lost the House in 2018, Emmer, about to take over the party’s House campaign arm, told Fox 9: “It is what it is. The voters have spoken.”

The evidence he offered for fraud this time was who won, not citing a single documented fraudulent vote or even a conspiracy theory: Attorney General Keith Ellison, Senator-elect Peggy Flanagan and Abdi Daisane, the first Somali American legislator elected from the St. Cloud area. On Fox, without naming him, Emmer said Daisane “was guilty of fraud.” Minnesota state court records show no criminal case against Daisane, and the reporting we found shows no federal charge.

The nonprofit that sponsored his day care’s federal meal funds settled a state fraud case, but his center was not named in that lawsuit. The attorney general’s office says investigations of people and sites connected to that sponsor are ongoing; nothing public ties them to Daisane.

Johnson asked about James O’Keefe — the right-wing activist charged in October over a primary-day video when he donned a burqa and unsuccessfully tried to participate in Minnesota’s primary election — and what Minnesota was “doing to him.” 

Emmer called O’Keefe’s stunt “brilliant.” His account: O’Keefe vouched for “five or six people,” and “they gave them all ballots. They didn’t vote.”

The Hennepin County attorney’s account is different. O’Keefe and Cam Higby gave election judges the names of registered voters, some of them dead. When the judges asked them to sign the oath, which carries a perjury penalty, “they made excuses to leave.” Vouching confirms an address, not an identity. Anyone registering that way still has to give a Minnesota driver’s license number, a state ID number or the last four digits of a Social Security number, and sign the oath. Every vouched voter is checked after the election. Fewer than 0.6% of votes in 2024 involved vouching.

Emmer also left this out: To vouch, you have to be registered in that precinct already. That is why O’Keefe and Higby had to impersonate other voters to get to the vouching portion.

That’s also what they’re charged with. They aren’t accused of casting fraudulent ballots. Each faces two felonies, unlawful voting and identity theft, under a state law that bars anyone from misrepresenting their identity when applying for a ballot. “You cannot go into a polling place and misidentify yourself, use other people’s identity, and say that to our election judges as you apply for the ballot, whether or not you intend to vote,” Moriarty said. 

O’Keefe calls the case “lawfare.” 

How “brilliant” is a stunt that ends in two felony charges?

Ellison

On Ingraham’s show, Emmer said Ellison was “caught on tape essentially being bribed.” He told Johnson the attorney general had promised “Somali fraudsters” protection from an investigation.

MN-06 Watch transcribed all 54 minutes of that December 2021 recording. In it, Ellison says he is hearing about the child-nutrition program complaints “for the first time.” When the audio became public in 2025, Reformer editor Patrick Coolican and Kayseh Magan criticized Ellison for being oblivious and inappropriately criticizing the Walz administration, which was his client. But no one in the recording discusses committing fraud. Some of the people in the room were convicted later.

Emmer also told Johnson that, “I’m told,” Ellison announced on his first day that there would be no more investigations without his approval, and “never approved any of them.” His office has also clocked more than 350 Medicaid fraud convictions since his tenure began in 2019. In September, Ellison’s office reached an $18.5 million settlement with Partners in Nutrition, another sponsor in the federal child-meal program, over fraud claims his office brought. You can’t settle a fraud case you never brought. And being told something doesn’t make it true.

‘They’re not going to be working with us’

Ingraham asked whether Democrats would work with Republicans on issues like gas prices. Emmer: “They’re not going to be working with us… I would not expect them to work with us. Where are we going to find middle ground…?” 

Emmer has often had trouble finding middle ground with members of his own party in the Senate. In five interviews, he didn’t name a single issue where he would seek Democratic votes. In 2020, as the party’s campaign chief, he told NPR that a narrow Democratic majority would have “no choice but to work with Republicans.” Republicans still control the executive branch, so any legislation that becomes law will need the White House’s signature.

The audience

All five interviews were on conservative outlets, and his language got sharper as the platforms got more partisan. 

On Fox & Friends, he stuck to the economy and the 2028 map; Minnesota never came up. 

On Ingraham’s prime-time show, Minnesota meant fraud, Ellison and Daisane. 

On Newsmax, Omar was “a dishonest, anti-American individual” and Democrats were “Marxist, socialist anarchists.” 

On Gaetz’s show, new Democrats were “terrorist sympathizers” who would “regret they ever put their name on a ballot.” 

The burqa answer, i.e., new American dress code, “gullible” and “get the hell out of here” came only on Johnson’s online show, the longest of the five. Hosts often set up the topic. Emmer didn’t push back on any of them. If anything, he leaned into the framing.

Promising aggressive oversight is standard for a House minority, and Democrats made similar promises when they were out of power. Minnesota’s fraud cases are real, too. Feeding Our Future produced federal convictions, and Emmer has pressed the issue for years. 

The record, however, doesn’t show that Minnesota’s elections were corrupted, that Ellison was bribed or that Daisane was charged. 

The fact checks and court records say otherwise, but Minnesota’s most powerful member of Congress, with the seat still at the table, repeats it anyway. 

Emmer’s office and campaign did not respond to questions sent Thursday.