Congresswoman Claudia Tenney called it exactly right on Newsmax when she accused the mainstream media of treating the anti-ICE street theater in Minnesota like front-page breaking news while burying far bigger scandals. Tenney argued the spectacle of protests conveniently distracts from a widening federal fraud probe and alleged misuse of taxpayer dollars in the state. Her frustration reflects a growing conservative view that the media is more interested in narratives than the truth.
What the press prefers to frame as righteous protest is rooted in a chaotic scene after an unprecedented surge of federal agents into the Twin Cities, an operation that has inflamed local tensions and even resulted in deadly confrontations. Minnesotans have watched as demonstrations, church disruptions, and mass rallies dominate cable cycles while questions about what prompted the surge go unanswered by sympathetic reporters. The result is a country distracted by outrage porn instead of focused on public safety and accountability.
The truth the broadcast networks won’t focus on is that federal officials have been conducting an extensive fraud investigation in Minneapolis — one tied to massive alleged thefts from multiple federal programs and a web of schemes that prosecutors say stretch back years. High-level Treasury and homeland security officials have publicly announced initiatives and probes aimed at recovering stolen taxpayer dollars and dismantling the networks behind this fraud. This is the kind of corruption that actually costs everyday Americans, but it’s being sidelined for camera-ready protests.
Tenney didn’t mince words: the media is “wearing a team jersey for the Democrats,” elevating performative outrage from sympathetic lawmakers while ignoring the harder story about fraud and political cronyism. She accused certain Democratic politicians of staging performances and switching the spotlight away from criminal activity and misuse of public funds — a charge conservatives see as consistent with years of partisan protectionism in blue cities. Americans deserve reporters who will chase the money trail, not amplify political theater.
Meanwhile, local leaders have chosen to sue the federal government over the surge rather than answer uncomfortable questions about why so much federal scrutiny fell on their communities in the first place. That legal theater gives the perfect optics for the same outlets trying to cast federal law enforcement as the villain, even while taxpayers tally the cost of alleged fraud and local dysfunction. If officials truly cared about Minnesotans, they would cooperate with investigations and clean house instead of preening for sympathetic cameras.
Conservatives should be clear-eyed about the stakes: law and order matters, and so does getting to the bottom of who stole from hard-working Americans and how they did it. Standing with ICE and federal investigators doesn’t mean we’re against immigrants; it means we’re against criminals and against the theft of the public trust. The nation needs accountability, not performative outrage, and it’s time the press stopped covering for one political team while the other fights to protect the rule of law.
Hardworking Americans should demand a simple thing: reporting that follows facts, not agendas. Ask your local outlets why the fraud investigation isn’t the lead story on every channel and why protests get the sympathetic spin while alleged thieves get protected by silence. We owe it to taxpayers, to victims of fraud, and to the principle of equal justice under law to insist the cameras stop being props in a political show and start serving the public instead.
