Ventura blasts Republicans over Jan. 6, election denials

Former Gov. Jesse Ventura said Friday that he eagerly agreed to Gov. Tim Walz's request for endorsement because the DFL governor won him over four years ago.

After Walz was elected governor in 2018, he called Ventura for advice during the whirlwind of the first 24 hours after his victory. Ventura said that neither of his other two successors, GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty and DFL Gov. Mark Dayton, sought his counsel.

So when Walz recently called Ventura for his endorsement, the former governor said he "thought a moment" and signed on.

That was just part of a feisty and entertaining 20-minute interview that Ventura gave Friday on WCCO Radio's Chad Hartman Show.

The former Reform Party governor, who served from 1999 to 2003, said he was aware of the backlash from Republicans over his endorsement of Walz. An hour before Ventura went on the air with Hartman, GOP challenger Scott Jensen brought up the endorsement on Minnesota Public Radio during the final gubernatorial debate.

The governor, Jensen said, was celebrating his endorsement by Ventura — "the same guy who is on with Alex Jones and said police better wake up to the facts that when you arm them to look like storm troopers and make them look like SS Nazi troops, that's a recipe for disaster."

In his interview with Hartman, Ventura didn't address that comment directly. But he blamed the Republican Party for the "deterioration" of democracy.

Republicans, he said, "won't even acknowledge Jan. 6 ... and yet they claim they're the party of law and order. Well excuse me, that was a violent attack on our Capitol that day and they don't even want it investigated."

Hartman asked Ventura what he thought of Jensen. "I don't think of him too often," Ventura said, adding that "anyone that runs under that [Republican] banner is a hypocrite, probably."

As for Alex Jones, the far-right radio show host and conspiracy theorist, Ventura said he had connected with him while working on his show, "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura," that ran on TruTV from 2009 to 2012. Ventura pointed out that was a decade ago, while Republicans have "embraced [Jones] for over 10 years."

Last month, a Connecticut jury ordered Jones to pay nearly $1 billion to the families of the Sandy Hook massacre who were harassed and threatened because of his lies about the 2012 Newtown school shooting. Jones has appealed the ruling.

Ventura laughed off Republican claims that he's a disgraced conspiracy theorist. The "entire GOP platform is based on a debunked conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was rigged," Ventura said, his voice dripping with disdain. "And they're going to call me a conspiracy theorist?"

Ventura called his one-time ally, former President Donald Trump, the "Jim Jones of the Republican Party" and said the Republicans are drinking "the Trump Kool-Aid." Jones was a cult leader who in 1978 convinced 900 of his followers to commit suicide by drinking cyanide-laced juice.

As he said in his video endorsing Walz, Ventura reiterated that the two most important issues to him in this election are the survival of democracy and women's rights. "The major issue ain't to me the economy and inflation," Ventura said. "Inflation is like the wind. It comes and goes."

He praised Walz's handling of the COVID-19 outbreak, saying the governor listened to experts and did his best during a difficult time. "I would have hated to govern during that pandemic," Ventura said.

The Ventura and Walz administrations have a significant connection: Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm, who served in the job for both governors. She oversaw much of the pandemic response for Walz.

In comments after Friday's debate, Walz said that while he and Ventura don't agree on everything, "I think he made it very clear he's deeply concerned about democracy" and what denial of the 2020 presidential election results has done to the United States.