It must have come as a surprise to Minnesota's far-left politicians that President Trump took their half-a-billion-dollar request for a bailout ... and said no.

According to Power Line's John Hinderaker:

In a letter dated July 2, Minnesota’s Governor Tim Walz asked–pleaded with–the Federal Emergency Management Agency for money to help pay for the damages caused by rioters and arsonists in Minneapolis. Walz’s letter is disingenuous in its description of how $500,000,000 in destruction came about:

The resources of local, tribal, county and state governments were already stretched thin due to our ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, all levels of government surged available resources for immediate response to preserve life and safety and to protect property and infrastructure from additional damage.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, under Governor Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Minnesota and Minneapolis have among the most dysfunctional governance in the United States.

They're now crying ow-ie and saying Trump is heartless. They're trying to use it to make political hay. They're bound to find themselves short of money from the tax base as businesses flee the state, and from there, lay off cops and teachers, anyone who's got a visible face to the public. The bureaucrats and diversity officers will get laid off last.

But the reality is, these clowns dropped themselves into it and intentionally let cities such as Minneapolis burn, the better to Get Trump. Their game was very cynical - they would let looters and rioters do their thing, pin the act of a bad cop on President Trump through the mayhem wrought, and then reap political hay for themselves as voters ate it up and continued to vote blue. Business owners just stood by in horror as leftist mobs set Minneapolis alight, and police, acting on city leaders' orders, stood by and did nothing. Then these political leaders beavered away to 'defund' the police, institutionalizing the certainty of mayhem continuing and their own power to extend indefinitely. Hinderaker has an excellent link to an investigative report describing just how bad it was. 

That's a man-made disaster, not a natural disaster, which is what FEMA funds are for. And that rightly calls for a response of 'no.' It's bad enough that these clowns allowed a bad cop with 18 complaints against him to remain on the police force. It's bad enough that they let their city burn. It's bad enough that they tried to pin the whole thing on President Trump and make him the bad cop. Now they're trying to make Trump pay for it, or rather, the taxpayers whose interests he guards pay for it. And Trump, true to form, spotted the nasty little game, called out the enemy action for what it was, and just said no.

He wasn't going to be their patsy for all the sheet showing they had put on.

Now, there's some speculation that this act might be bad for the election time, as Minnesota is a swing state. Trump is doing poorly with suburban women there, to take but one instance, and presumably they're just the types who view federal bailouts as the only way to make things better.

But tough love is what is needed in Minnesota, given the political games going on.

If Minnesota is problematic plenty of other areas are going to be heartened by the backbone shown. 

See, the thing with Trump is, he can huff and puff all he wants about the rioters and the importance of punishing them, but for most voters, he's grasping at straws - there's a whole system that buttresses this activity, and it's found in the city halls and statehouses of lefting blue America. Hitting the government officials who are enabling this behavior is going to provoke outcries, but it's also going to put a stop to statue-toppling, looting, zonal takeovers, and property trashings from the leftwing mobs.

Much of what Trump has proposed so far is toothless-tiger stuff - ten-year-jail terms for rioters if anyone can find them, one year jail terms for flag burners - it's all nonsense because everyone knows leftwing judges won't jail them and rabidly leftwing district attorneys won't prosecute them. It's too small. The systems are what need disciplining and to no one's surprise, Trump's telling Minnesota 'no' drew huge cheers on Twitter. It's a sign of something - a Trump with the backbone to get things done.

My money's on this callout of the left's dirty, cynical game helping Trump at the polls.

Image credit: Tony Webster, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0, processed with FotoSketcher.