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Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has received praise for his work on health issues in his state. Minnesota was rated the best state for health care by WalletHub in 2023 and 2024, noting Walz’s commitment to access and affordability. He has been a strong supporter of reproductive rights and was the first governor to codify abortion access into a state constitution after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And, under his leadership, Minnesota became the first state to fund research into long COVID.
Had Walz not handily won his 2022 gubernatorial reelection, the public health of Minnesota would have suffered — ironically, under a physician. Walz’s opposition in that race was Trump-endorsed Dr. Scott Jensen, who pushed, along with a post-George Floyd law-and-order hard line, anti-vax narratives and anti-abortion policy proposals.
https://twitter.com/GYamey/status/1561846474194968580
In April 2020, Jensen appeared as a guest on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News program, claiming COVID-19 case counts were inflated because hospitals were paid more for patients with a diagnosis of the viral illness. This was not true, but Trump parroted the claim on the campaign trail in 2020. PolitiFact cited Jensen alongside Trump in their “Lie of the Year: Coronavirus downplay and denial” story later that year.
Jensen was a member of the international COVID-19 skeptic group World Doctors Alliance, alongside Irish scientist Dr. Dolores Cahill, who found early pandemic fame with the conspiracy film Plandemic. He has also identified himself as a member of the pro-MAGA group America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS).
AFLDS was created in a partnership with the Tea Party Patriots and Council for National Policy to support Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign. Led by future insurrectionist Dr. Simone Gold and featuring now-Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, the group burst onto the scene with a late July 2020 press conference — “The White Coat Summit” — on the steps of the Supreme Court, endorsing Trump’s COVID-19 “cure,” hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), and arguing against lockdowns and masking.
A major randomized control trial out of the University of Minnesota had posted results showing no use for HCQ against the pandemic-causing virus the previous month. This was a blow to Trump, who had been hyping up the drug as a “game changer” since March of that year, after an Elon Musk-promoted Google Doc “white paper” lauding HCQ caught the attention of Fox News.
Like Musk and MAGA, AFLDS would turn vehemently anti-vax once the life-saving shots were rolled out. During the Delta and initial Omicron waves, an estimated 232,000 unvaccinated Americans died preventable COVID-19 deaths. Thanks to the politicization of the pandemic and spread of misinformation, Republican voters and those living in GOP-controlled states have suffered disproportionately high death rates (see here, here, here).
While Jensen has referred to himself as “quietly” a member of AFLDS and was not present at their initial “White Coat Summit” in 2020, he participated in their 2023 edition of the event, titled “The Reckoning.”
The event website wildly asserted “crimes against humanity” had taken place, with “millions harmed and killed by failed public health response” including “prolonged lockdowns, deadly hospital protocols, censorship of doctors, fraudulent ‘studies’ and dangerous defamation of safe, effective medications, and an unprecedented, worldwide experimental injection campaign.”
'Have you considered you're in this position for such a time as this?'
'When they come after me, they're coming after thousands and thousands of people.'@drscottjensen is a courageous warrior! pic.twitter.com/AHWyK7Ylct
— America's Frontline Doctors (@AFLDSorg) January 16, 2024
A Hard Right Turn Into the Spotlight
Jensen was a respected 2016 Minnesota Family Physician of the Year and moderate Republican state senator prior to the pandemic and his engagement with MAGA politics. Since then, he has engaged in extreme rhetoric via his various social media accounts — Twitter/X (133.2K followers), Facebook (504K followers), Instagram (60.6K followers), and YouTube (49.1K subscribers). His public commentary and behavior have earned him many complaints to his medical board and multiple rounds of investigations.
Like AFLDS leader Gold, Jensen sued his state medical board and has been able to fight off losing his medical licensing. This is not altogether surprising, as The Washington Post’s 2023 investigation into state medical boards showed how infrequently physicians who spread COVID-19 misinformation have faced licensing consequences. Jensen’s lawsuit was dismissed in March; he filed an amended complaint the following month.
While Walz has gone on to a successful second term as governor, Jensen has attempted to make a martyr of himself for the “health freedom” movement. He has blamed Walz and the state of Minnesota for weaponizing the medical boards against him, seemingly unable to grasp that his unethical behavior could precipitate some level of professional repercussion.
In one particularly disturbing February 2023 Facebook post, ahead of a meeting with his state medical board, Jensen shared a video of an anti-vax rally in France featuring a doctor in effigy in a noose. His caption read, “My heart goes pitter patter with appreciation for the people of France who are standing up for doctors and patients, and recognizing the tyrannical power of big Pharma.” The video was from RT, a Russian state-controlled propaganda network.
Following the announcement of Walz as Harris’s running mate, Jensen returned to the premiere US right-wing propaganda outlet, Fox News, for a segment with Jesse Watters on Walz’s “radical record.” They pushed the desperate “swiftboating” smear attempt on Walz’s military record launched by Trump’s deeply unpopular running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. (Jensen has no military experience.)
Tim Walz's entire career can be defined as a repeated pattern of quitting then blaming everyone but himself. He has left a wake of chaos. My segment on @JesseBWatters Primetime. pic.twitter.com/y1iFWV8NFL
— Scott Jensen (@drscottjensen) August 9, 2024
Much like Trump, Jensen came across as deeply bitter and rattled by this Democratic ticket. If this is the best they can launch against Walz, the prognosis of MAGA’s tired attack-to-deflect strategy is not looking great going into November.
Also like Trump — and the MAGA movement itself — Jensen is overdue to learn a lesson about personal accountability and consequences. Perhaps a former teacher and former prosecutor who aren’t afraid to call them out are just the duo to deliver it.
