Remind our audience why you jumped out of the governor's race and into this one.

In January, there were still a dozen Republican candidates vying for the endorsement and nomination.

And at that time, Governor Walz dropped out and Senator Klobuchar got in.

And there was a lot of tumult in the world as well.

And I felt like I was no longer the strongest candidate to run for governor for the Republican Party.

And yet people had been asking me if I would run for other offices statewide.

And based on those considerations, I made the decision to run for state auditor.

How would you see yourself using that seat on that council?

But I think it'd be great for the audience to know exactly what it is you would be able to do if you were in that position.

There are five executive offices in Minnesota, and the state auditor is one.

Arguably, the state auditor position should be the most neutral.

I don't think that we should make the auditor's role as partisan as some might make it.

It has less to do with authority, I think, and more to do with information gathering.

And that would be where I would land.

The statutes provide the state auditor the opportunity to do best practice reviews, to utilize subpoena power in their investigations.

Because it needs a lot of legwork.

But instead, why should voters vote for you? And what do you bring to the table?

I'm a fiscal conservative without question.

I think that we have to spend less.

We've seen almost a 50% increase in the Minnesota budget in less than a decade.

That can't go on.

But to speak of my opponent, Zach Filipovich, In the last five years, he was on the city council.

He led the charge to triple electricity franchise fees.

What keeps you in the fight?

uh insured of the victory and so it is so i'm going to bring up our friend here uh dr scott and former senator scott jensen and i just want to tell you thank you guy very much i appreciate you and i also understand that you're running for the state auditor in the state of minnesota here but i don't want to get too far ahead of the game first let's address the fraud as to what we're seeing in the country and how you see as to how to bring a resolve concerning the issues

Well, thank you so much.

I appreciate you having me on your show.

I think that in Minnesota, there has been literally an attack on the very heart and soul of Minnesota.

And I think the name of that attack is fraud.

And fraud is its own particular kind of evil.

It isn't just taking something that doesn't belong to you.

What are your thoughts?

uh insured of the victory and so it is so i'm going to bring up our friend here uh dr scott and former senator scott jensen and i just want to tell you thank you guy very much i appreciate you and i also understand that you're running for the state auditor in the state of minnesota here but i don't want to get too far ahead of the game first let's address the fraud as to what we're seeing in the country and how you see as to how to bring a resolve concerning the issues

Well, thank you so much.

I appreciate you having me on your show.

I think that in Minnesota, there has been literally an attack on the very heart and soul of Minnesota.

And I think the name of that attack is fraud.

And fraud is its own particular kind of evil.

It isn't just taking something that doesn't belong to you.

What are your thoughts?

And I was wrong at the time to go in to go and do that.

I think vulnerability drives some of those turning points in our lives.

I think that with the Vietnam War, which was a big part of my life when I was growing up, the vulnerability was that America couldn't necessarily accomplish what it said it would militarily.

That was a new chapter in the generations surrounding me.

Then we had 9-11, the vulnerability.

We needed to lean into government.

Well, government would go after Osama bin Laden.

And yet... crickets or individuals who did step up and were told to either shut up or move to other parts of the government to keep them quiet it's it's incredible to see but you've mentioned you care a lot what are your thoughts on this story this morning that you care's role in minnesota minnesota's medicaid fraud what the insurer knew and when and they were aware and they just kept cutting the checks

But how come you decided to move from governor to state auditor?

Basically, there were two big reasons.

Number one is when Mary and I, my wife and I decided to run, we felt that in a rematch with Tim Walls that I could win.

We felt like some of the personal and social issues that had been so dramatically prominent in 2022 would not be again.

And that with the Walls fraud being so prominent that we could win that race.

When Nick Shirley came to Minnesota in December of 2025 and the temperature in the kitchen got so hot for Wallace that he withdrew, Klobuchar jumped in.

And at that point in time, Mary and I just did an honest appraisal of our lives and what we wanted to do in public service and what we thought would be most helpful.

And if so, do you think that the American people have learned their lesson?

Okay.

So we've made our own sleeping bags and tents and cookware and backpack and all the essentials that you need in a backpacking kit.

You can buy those things individually or as a curated ready-to-go pack in our own patented backpack that has labels and organization built into it.

Yeah.

A system that makes sense that, like you said, forces weight distribution, and targeted towards that beginner backpacker that's maybe not really wanting to piecemeal it all together and have a fun time going to many shops, part of that shopping experience.

Yeah, you got to experience it.

Then it's like, it's hard.

Then, you know, you don't really get it.

You know, I don't think that I would believe it unless I saw my teachers in person and experienced their skill, you know, hands-on and with my own eyes.

And, you know, when you see these gentlemen that are no longer young, And, you know, if you try and punch them, you hurt your hand or your wrist.

And when they, you know, touch you lightly, you go flying.

it's a whole different ball game.

sides, you know.

And what is that financial incentive, if you'll share with us?

Well, I have a background in coding, and so I've been asked to give lectures around the country at different times, so coding is something that's near and dear to me.

So when I started seeing some of the massaging going on, I thought, "Okay, we need to do a little research." So I made some calls to hospital administrators, went on websites, checked out CMS or Medicare's information.

And what I learned was that a DRG or a diagnosis-related group, uh, admission to the hospital for a Medicare patient for typical pneumonia would get paid somewhere around $4,600.

But if it was put down as COVID-19 pneumonia, it would be $13,000.

And if a ventilator happened to be used, it would be $39,000.

I also knew that some hospital administrators knew, but may not want to confess in public, that their hospital was small enough that they probably would not receive the benefits of some of those, if you will, inflated payments.

Learn more at accenture.com/spotify

That's just nonsense.

I would submit that we're pivoting towards a time now where we have to ask ourselves our questions about who are we? What is our country? Are we losing personal liberties? If we're going to use contact tracing, what does that look like? Does that look like voluntary use of our phone, or is it gonna be involuntary? Are there gonna be drones that swoop and watch us? We need to be very careful because in the end, when we're all said and done, we're looking at a respiratory virus, a single-stranded RNA virus.

We've dealt with these before, and we know that 40 to 50% of people who get it may not even know they had it.

We know another 40, 50% that get it will skate through it.

We know that we're probably gonna, at the end of the day, end up somewhere between one out of 1,000 patients dying from it.

But there's actually even, as I understand from you, economic incentives by the hospitals, and some have been reclassified as COVID-19 deaths after the fact, and what is that financial incentive that you'll share with us?

us?We were basically being advised as physicians as to how to correctly complete a death certificate if COVID-19 was involved directly, or perhaps even presumptively or probably or peripherally involved.

I was coached and massaged to utilize COVID-19 as a factor in the causation of death, even if I hadn't checked a COVID-19 test, even if I hadn't had an interest in one.

Are the general population of Somalians like they were in Somalia, or are they trying to become Minnesotans? Because the ones that we're hearing about aren't doing good things.

I think it's a mix to be sure.

But I think that the people that are probably least inclined to assimilate are the people that have found their way into some sort of a power circle.

The everyday Somalian who's trying to eke out a living, raise their children, put a roof over their head and food in their tummies and take care of their kids.

These people are desperately working to assimilate.

I've been having lunch with one fellow for the last seven years, and he started out with his own company doing a lawn service.

from the lawn service, he added landscaping.

Doc, why can't anybody stop this? It's illegal.