It would take volumes to recite how the city government in Minneapolis and the state government in Minnesota made it possible for rioters to inflict hundreds of millions of dollars of damage on Minneapolis and its twin city, St. Paul. After standing aside while Black Lives Matters protesters, Antifa anarchists, and garden-variety criminals trashed those cities, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz then had the chutzpah to ask for more than $500 million in aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (“FEMA”). On Saturday, to most people’s surprise, FEMA said “no.”

Because George Floyd died during an arrest in Minneapolis, the excessively Democrat politicians at both the state and city level felt it was incumbent upon them to do absolutely nothing when the looting and fires started. The fact that much of the damage took place in black neighborhoods and destroyed black-owned businesses was irrelevant to Mayor Jacob Frey, the Minneapolis City Council, and Governor Walz. It was more important to show their revolutionary street creds.

According to the local Minneapolis paper, the Star Tribune, the decision to be “cool” with the “protests” proved costly:

Walz asked President Donald Trump to declare a “major disaster” for the state of Minnesota in his request to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on July 2. More than 1,500 buildings were damaged by fires, looting and vandalism in the days of unrest that followed Floyd’s May 25 death in Minneapolis police custody, racking up more than $500 million in damages, according to Walz.

Most people probably assumed that, because this is an election year, Trump would push FEMA to approve Walz’s request. It came as a delightful surprise on Saturday to learn that FEMA refused:

The governor’s spokesman, Teddy Tschann, confirmed late Friday that the request for federal aid was denied.

“The Governor is disappointed that the federal government declined his request for financial support,” Tschann said in a statement. “As we navigate one of the most difficult periods in our state’s history, we look for support from our federal government to help us through.”

What this means is that Trump, unlike any other politician ever, is not going to use taxpayer money to buy votes. He’s looked at what happened in Minneapolis and St. Paul, which are the epicenters of the damage, and said, “You brought this on yourselves.”  

Although Trump won the state, he did so thanks to voters outside of the big cities, places that did not suffer as much from the riots. The devastated twin cities, meanwhile, rewarded Democrats with over 60% of their votes. Those votes reflect a world view that's generally in sync with the Black Lives Matter and Antifa views of the world. Indeed, the Minnesota City Council is so left that, despite the civic carnage, it’s still decided to do away with police altogether.

In terms of moral hazard – the idea that people engage in more risky behavior if they believe they’re insulated from consequences – the twin cities residents undoubtedly assumed as they embarked upon the Marxist / race-war experiment that, if the experiment went awry, the American people would pick up the pieces for them. Trump’s government just told them, instead, that the old saying is true: “You made your bed, and now you’ll sleep in it.” This wasn’t vindictive. It was a way of welcoming leftists to the real world.

America would be a much saner place if conservative voters weren’t always on the hook for costly blue state insanity. Trump already went some way to remedy this with his tax bill, which placed a cap on people’s ability to deduct state taxes from their federal tax returns. Because blue states, with their huge governments, have extremely high taxes, the previous practice of allowing blue state residents to deduct state taxes from federal taxes effectively nationalized costly leftist policies. Every penny that a blue state citizen did not pay in federal taxes had to be offset by some unlucky person in a red state.

On Saturday, FEMA told Minnesota that what happened wasn’t some natural disaster but was, instead, a human-caused mess that Democrat politicians fomented. It then made clear that Minnesota, having created the mess, cannot expect the rest of America to bail it out.

Now what we must hope is that Trump and FEMA stand firm in the face of the inevitable accusations that they’re cruel, hate-filled, vindictive people who refuse to make all of America financially responsible for the idiocy of leftist ideologues in both the Minnesota governor’s mansion and the Minneapolis town hall.

Image: YouTube screengrab