Fox Business host Larry Kudlow on Thursday tried and failed to land an attack on Democratic vice presidential pick Gov. Tim Walz’s economic record in Minnesota, falsely claiming that the state’s business and employment situations are awful and rambling about unnamed “very far-left social engineering-type policies.”
Kudlow, who served the former president and current Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as a top economic adviser, has a record of advocating for bogus economic policies and making failed predictions on the economy. Kudlow defended the failed right-wing “trickle-down economics” model after President Joe Biden criticized it in a State of the Union address, admitted he was wrong for predicting a recession earlier this year, and expressed support for Trump’s impossible plan to replace some taxes with much higher tariffs. Additionally, Kudlow once begged a multimillionaire guest to bail Trump out of his $464 million New York civil judgment for fraud.
Kudlow also has pushed absurd attacks on Democratic economic policies and related news releases. Following the blowout May jobs report, Kudlow joined other right-wing media in making nativist attacks on the jobs numbers. Kudlow also accused Biden of engaging in “racial warfare against white folks” by seeking to increase taxes on capital gains, and he rambled about Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, saying “her whole history is DEI,” a thinly disguised racial insult.
So when Kudlow attacks Walz’s economic record and accuses him of pushing extreme policies, his claims should be taken with several grains of salt.
Aside from Kudlow being a discredited critic, his attacks are false or misleading. Here are the facts:
- CBS Minnesota reported in July that Minnesota under Walz’s governance “is ranked sixth in the nation for business, with high marks coming from areas judging the state's competitiveness, workforce, infrastructure, economy, quality of life and business friendliness.” Another study also ranked Minnesota the “best state for independent retailers.”
- Reuters showed that Minnesota has an unemployment rate of just 2.9%, well below the national rate of 4.1%. The state has also been “routinely besting the country as a whole on … labor force participation and wage growth,” according to the Star Tribune.
- The Minnesota Reformer reported that the state gained more than 23,000 residents in 2023.
- All of these positive developments for Minnesota pair with a progressive tax system that taxes the rich more. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy noted that among Walz’s tax policies are “a new Child Tax Credit that is expected to slash child poverty in Minnesota by one-third, according to Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy.” ITEP further explained: “While the Minnesota tax code is somewhat progressive, it is far from radical. The state has embraced practical, administrable reforms that have lowered taxes for working-class families, reduced child poverty, and addressed the public’s frustrations with the tax treatment of multinational companies and wealthy people.”
Kudlow didn’t specify any of the policies he deems extreme. Perhaps he meant Walz’s record of ensuring all school children receive free meals? One can imagine Kudlow viewing that as radical. Or maybe he was referring to Walz giving students access to sanitary products? Some of the more deranged figures in right-wing media seem to have thoughts about that.
All of this follows other false, desperate smears over Walz’s military service, Minnesota’s plummeting crime rate, and weird attacks on random, rather mainstream policies that Walz has overseen as governor.
