Matt Birk, a retired All-Pro NFL center, Super Bowl champion, and former Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Minnesota, says that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz “can’t lead, can’t execute, but can give a stump speech.”
Birk went to Harvard and graduated with a degree in economics. He played for the Minnesota Vikings from 1998 through 2008 before moving to the Baltimore Ravens, where he won the Super Bowl in 2012. An All-Pro for six seasons, he is frequently mentioned as a candidate for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
He entered the political arena in 2022, when he ran on a ticket with Republican Scott Jennings against Governor Walz and Lt. Gov. Penny Flanagan.
Birk spoke to Breitbart News on Tuesday about being “shocked” by Vice President Kamala Harris’s decision to choose Walz last week as her running mate.
“Here’s the thing about Tim Walz,” Birk said. “He will literally say anything when he’s campaigning to get elected.”
Once in office, Birk said, Walz cannot deliver.
Case in point: Walz promised Minnesota families that he would send them each $2,000 checks to help them deal with the rising costs of inflation, with money from a state budget surplus (itself partly from federal coronavirus funds).
I’m fighting to put money back in pockets by sending checks up to $2,000 to help Minnesotans with rising costs.
— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) October 5, 2022
Ultimately, the “Walz checks” came out to far less — up to $1,300 — and were taxable by the Internal Revenue Service.
“Economically — the economy here is growing slower than the national average,” says Birk, who is an investor in startup companies. “Our schools, which once used to be toward the tops in the nation — he’s a former teacher, he talks about being an education guy — we slipped to 17th.”
Birk adds: “Politicians are politicians. He’s that. We hold most most politicians to a pretty low standard when it comes to telling the truth. But can you actually do the job? Can you govern? Can you lead?
“Minnesota leads the nation in fraud,” he continues, noting the state’s worst-in-the-nation record for coronavirus scams, including a $250 million fraud case involving Feeding our Future, a state-backed program to feed poor kids.
Birk also notes reports that the Minnesota teachers’ pension fund has also been accused of overstating its returns by underreporting its fees.
“When things go bad, they fall on your desk,” he says, holding Walz responsible.
Birk says that Walz’s “‘aw, shucks’ small-town guy” persona is just an act, noting that he and Jennings won much of rural Minnesota in 2022, while Walz’s strength was in urban areas.
“In our election we won 75 of the 87 counties in Minnesota, but of course they ran it up big in Hennepin and Ramsey counties [the Twin Cities metro area]. … He got booed off the stage at a debate at FarmFest. He does not appeal to those rural voters.”
Birk said that the “stolen valor” issue came up in the 2022 race, when critics pointed out that Walz had exaggerated his military career.
(Walz has claimed, erroneously, to have retired at the rank of command sergeant major, and implied he had served in “war” when he had been far from combat. He retired shortly before his unit was deployed to Iraq in 2005, in a decision denounced by some of his former colleagues, who went through with the mission.)
The issue was covered up by local media outlets, which lean “way left,” Birk says.
Minnesota Vikings’ Chester Taylor, left, is congratulated by teammate Matt Birk after Taylor’s touchdown against the Arizona Cardinals in the second quarter of an NFL football game Sunday, Dec. 14, 2008 in Glendale, Ariz. The Vikings defeated the Cardinals 35-14. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
A post on X (formerly Twitter) from Birk in 2022 recently re-emerged after Walz was named Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate. Birk played audio of Walz’s “snitch” line, which the governor used to encourage Minnesota residents to pry into each other’s lives and report violations of stay-at-home orders during the coronavirus pandemic.
Throwback: Tim Walz kept his snitch line up, even until June of ‘22 when I ran for LT. Governor.
Glad he’s finally getting SOME scrutiny. pic.twitter.com/NNBfKLk2UJ
— Matt Birk (@BirkMatt) August 8, 2024
Walz now claims on the campaign trail that his philosophy — on abortion, at least — is “mind your own damn business.”
Birk says that the COVID hotline was just another example of Walz saying one thing and doing another.
“His tag line for his gubernatorial campaign was ‘One Minnesota,” Birk recalled. “Having a COVID snitch line does not cultivate unity.”
Though he is not running for office at the moment, Birk faces another potential election — into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
There are only seven centers who have been inducted thus far, making Birk a potential pick. He says he is not “sitting around, worrying about trying to get into the Hall of Fame” — though he adds: “If it happened, it would be unreal.”
“I don’t have any complaints about my career — it was fantastic,” he recalls. “It was way more than I deserved.”
He only started playing football in his sophomore year in high school, then made it to Harvard and to the Vikings — though “you can’t win a Super Bowl playing for the Vikings,” he jokes. He retired after the Baltimore Ravens won it all in 2012.
Birk says he would like to see “zero politics in sports,” though he acknowledges that “athletes have giant platforms, and use it to say what they think is right.
“There was a time with the whole anthem and everything where it was getting too much for me, it really was taking the joy out of it,” Birk adds. “It’d be nice if sports remained as pure as possible. When I think about joy, I think about competition.”
As for that word — “joy” — it’s not something Birk associates with Tim Walz, though Walz uses it on the campaign trail.
“I don’t think he’s brought a lot of joy to Minnesotans.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.