Minnesota Rep. Walter Hudson traveled to Washington in January to appear before the U.S. House Oversight Committee, where he alerted the members about fraud in Minnesota’s public programs.
The Albertville Republican told the committee that Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor politicians had long been operating with impunity.
“There’s people who have been born and grown up and are full grown adults that could drink a beer tonight on New Year’s Eve, who’ve never known a Republican governor in the state of Minnesota,” Hudson said. “The Democrat machine has fostered an arrogance which makes them believe that they can get away with anything.”
He was featured on Fox News and NewsNation. The D.C. trip also generated a clip — which he later shared in an online victory lap — of Hudson going toe-to-toe with U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. Hudson told her “I’m not playing this game.”
Just a couple months later, Hudson has fallen from the rarefied air of Congress and cable TV hits after police said he was intoxicated and carrying a handgun as a passenger in the truck of Rep. Elliott Engen, R-White Bear Township, who was arrested and charged with a DWI on March 27. Police also confiscated Hudson’s 9mm Smith & Wesson.
It’s a misdemeanor in Minnesota to carry a firearm while impaired, but police did no screening tests on Hudson, so he will not be charged due to the lack of evidence.
House Speaker Lisa Demuth, who is a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for Minnesota governor, stripped Hudson and Engen of their committee assignments.
“We take this very seriously,” Demuth told reporters last week. House Democrats have filed an ethics complaint against Hudson and Engen, stemming from a photo of the duo pictured at a St. Paul bar watching the Twins’ opening day game purportedly when they were supposed to be sitting in a legislative committee hearing.
Minnesota Rep. Walter Hudson traveled to Washington in January to appear before the U.S. House Oversight Committee, where he alerted the members about fraud in Minnesota’s public programs.
The Albertville Republican told the committee that Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor politicians had long been operating with impunity.
“There’s people who have been born and grown up and are full grown adults that could drink a beer tonight on New Year’s Eve, who’ve never known a Republican governor in the state of Minnesota,” Hudson said. “The Democrat machine has fostered an arrogance which makes them believe that they can get away with anything.”
He was featured on Fox News and NewsNation. The D.C. trip also generated a clip — which he later shared in an online victory lap — of Hudson going toe-to-toe with U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. Hudson told her “I’m not playing this game.”
Just a couple months later, Hudson has fallen from the rarefied air of Congress and cable TV hits after police said he was intoxicated and carrying a handgun as a passenger in the truck of Rep. Elliott Engen, R-White Bear Township, who was arrested and charged with a DWI on March 27. Police also confiscated Hudson’s 9mm Smith & Wesson.
It’s a misdemeanor in Minnesota to carry a firearm while impaired, but police did no screening tests on Hudson, so he will not be charged due to the lack of evidence.
House Speaker Lisa Demuth, who is a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for Minnesota governor, stripped Hudson and Engen of their committee assignments.
“We take this very seriously,” Demuth told reporters last week. House Democrats have filed an ethics complaint against Hudson and Engen, stemming from a photo of the duo pictured at a St. Paul bar watching the Twins’ opening day game purportedly when they were supposed to be sitting in a legislative committee hearing.
Hudson, through sheer force of constant and provocative posting, has become one of the state’s best known lawmakers, popping off late at night or in the early morning hours. He opines on everything, attacking Democrats and reveling in their criticism when they reciprocate.
“I’m a second term legislator of no seniority or significance … yet I’m the singular focus of the entire Democrat apparatus tonight,” Hudson posted on Feb. 20, the same day he criticized Democrats for resisting the federal government’s immigration crackdown. The Minnesota DFL Party posted his remarks on social media, noting that he said Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were shot and killed by immigration agents, put “themselves in harm’s way.”
“Best part, I can tell them how to defeat me and they still won’t,” Hudson posted that evening. “Just ignore me. Don’t react.”
Hudson exemplifies how the new politics of the attention economy have floated down to the state level: Followers, podcast downloads and YouTube subscribers — Hudson has nearly 160,000 — have become as important as laws passed or write-ups in the local papers, helping a handful of elected officials become media stars even as the arduous work of legislating remains a mostly offline affair. While semi-famous for his online presence, Hudson has a thin legislative record.
He also illustrates the often wide gulf between online and offline personalities. Online, he’s a bombastic pugilist. Offline, Hudson is non-confrontational, awkward, shy even.
Hudson’s posting can transform online bluster into offline fear, however.
After the killing of conservative icon Charlie Kirk, Hudson went on a posting bender that lasted a few days.
Hudson at the time said “war has been declared” on conservatives by progressives.
“If we were shot today, they would be online the next day justifying it,” Hudson said in a Sept. 12 X video, where he became enraged several times and even screamed at the camera.
“Oh, but you know my priority should be bipartisanship and compromise. To hell with that. To hell with that. Not gonna happen. I’ll let other people worry about that. … I’m tilting against my declared enemies. I’m tilting against the people who would celebrate the fact if I died tomorrow. That’s my priority.”
When the Reformer asked his Democratic colleagues in the days after Hudson’s Kirk-posting marathon for comment about his actions, only one was willing to comment, while others feared the potential backlash of his online army.
Since the March 27 incident, Hudson has gone mostly dark, opting to repost other people’s content instead and would only answer written questions from the Reformer.
Hudson said the fallout after his involvement in Engen’s arrest “has been a humbling period of reflection.”
Hudson denied that White Bear officers gave him special treatment, citing his compliance and honesty for their decision not to charge him.
“If you treat law enforcement with abiding respect, they may take that into consideration,” Hudson said, adding that if it were a Democratic colleague who had been caught drinking while carrying a firearm, he would have called it “reckless and irresponsible — exactly as I regarded my own choice in that moment. I’d also commend respectful compliance with law enforcement, as I exhibited.”
The incident, he said, has “prompted serious reflection on how I handle the pressures of this job, including my relationship with alcohol. I’ve owned the poor decisions and am taking concrete steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
The offline Hudson
Hudson grew up in Detroit and moved to Minnesota when he was 12. Detroit to the Twin Cities metro felt like Dorothy entering the land of Oz, he said in his office cubicle during an interview last fall, one of several the Reformer conducted last year after his Charlie Kirk postings.
Mid-conversation, Hudson popped a Zyn nicotine pouch into his mouth while explaining how he ended up in the Legislature.
His father is Black, mother white, and Hudson grew up a Jehovah’s Witness — a sect of Christianity that’s known for its door-to-door efforts to convert others.
“People talk about being colorblind. Jehovah’s Witnesses truly are. The identity of Jehovah’s Witness is your identity. Nothing else matters,” Hudson said.
Hudson left Jehovah’s Witnesses when he was 17, disillusioned with the hypocrisy of some church members, he said. But Hudson never lost his good versus evil worldview, often using words like “evil” to describe positions with which he disagrees.
His father had Democratic-leaning views, rooted in his childhood and the Civil Rights Movement.
“My dad would sit down and try to have ‘the talk’ with me,” Hudson said, referring to the conversation many Black men feel obligated to have with their sons about how to handle police and racism. “His experience was just so different than mine that it never quite clicked. I never felt like I needed to be afraid of the police or I was going to get jumped. That stuff had happened to him. The world changed, and now it’s changed again.”
Hudson’s parents weren’t strong mentors in his life, and he said after graduating high school he had his “lost years” working in security and just getting by. Hudson then met his now-wife, who was attending school in River Falls, Wisconsin.
Hudson spoke about his background while he editing his YouTube videos in his cubicle for about 20 minutes when Engen called. Engen that morning posted a video on social media that highlighted allegations against his Republican colleague, Rep. Ron Kresha, which Kresha had denied. Engen was seeking Hudson’s reassurance that he did the right thing, as the video had understandably rocked the House GOP caucus.
Hudson became involved in politics through the Tea Party movement during the Obama years. Later, he attended his local Republican Party unit and began to caucus.
Long before being elected to the Minnesota House, Hudson discovered the gift of political gab and got himself an AM talk radio program,“Closing Argument with Walter Hudson,” which he has now transitioned to an online video podcast.
If the rule in sales is to always be closing, the rule in talk radio and online politics is to always be talking. Until his recent break, Hudson has abided by it, faithfully.
During Operation Metro Surge, he posted on X one day after federal agents shot and killed Pretti that Pretti had “brandished a gun” and that the public didn’t need a video to prove what had actually happened because “We have an official statement from (the Department and Homeland Security) which has not been disproven.”
(Pretti never brandished the gun and was disarmed when he was shot.)
Hudson’s YouTube video opining about Pretti’s shooting has over 1.6 million views.
Hudson also uses his platforms to demonize transgender people.
“There are many tomboys who are now moms and wives. Taking that future from kids to affirm your ideology is evil,” Hudson posted last year about teen gender-affirming care.
In his office cubicle, Hudson has a photo of the trans activist who disrupted a House GOP hearing last year and screamed at Hudson with a bullhorn. The activist called Hudson a “chicken meatball-headed motherf***er.” An aide made the photo for Hudson’s cubicle, captioned with the words “chicken meatball-headed mother runner,” for a House GOP caucus Kentucky Derby game. That was the name of Hudson’s horse.
Despite hours spent online, Hudson in October told the Reformer that he was transitioning to a more offline lifestyle. Mostly because life online doesn’t pay enough, but he was also starting a nonprofit — the Frederick Douglass Project. The organization aims to reach out to people of color, listen to their needs and advocate for policy proposals aimed at bolstering families and “the dignity of earned success.”
In November, Hudson traveled to the Center of the American Experiment’s St. Cloud chapter’s “patriot party.” The event began at 6 p.m. Hudson arrived about a half hour late clutching a walker. He tore a ligament in his knee and was scheduled for surgery the next week.
He spoke to a few people, stood near the bar and waited for the announcer to call him up to give his speech.
Hudson told the room of about 150 attendees that Minnesota Republicans were winning because of the aggressive oversight of the House’s fraud committee and bragged that House Republicans were able to stomp on Walz’s hopes for a special session on gun control after the Annunciation shooting.
“Our tie doesn’t feel fantastic,” he said, referring to the power-sharing in the House, “but I gotta tell you, it feels a hell of a lot better than the trifecta did. That is a cause for celebration,” Hudson said.
When his speech was over, other GOP lawmakers and attendees mingled. Hudson snuck out. He said the pain in his knee was too much and he had to go, but it was tempting to think he just wanted to get back to his computer to resume posting.
Hudson said his posting and video content pulling back the curtain of the Legislature has helped Minnesotans better understand their government.
“I hate the fakery — I want actual debate and real representation,” Hudson said.
He wrote to the Reformer that he’s taking a temporary hiatus from posting his opinions on social media.
Look for it to end with real-time reactions about this very story.
Originally published by Minnesota Reformer, a nonprofit news organization.
He opines on everything, attacking Democrats and reveling in their criticism when they reciprocate.
“I’m a second term legislator of no seniority or significance … yet I’m the singular focus of the entire Democrat apparatus tonight,” Hudson posted on Feb. 20, the same day he criticized Democrats for resisting the federal government’s immigration crackdown. The Minnesota DFL Party posted his remarks on social media, noting that he said Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were shot and killed by immigration agents, put “themselves in harm’s way.”
“Best part, I can tell them how to defeat me and they still won’t,” Hudson posted that evening. “Just ignore me. Don’t react.”
Hudson exemplifies how the new politics of the attention economy have floated down to the state level: Followers, podcast downloads and YouTube subscribers — Hudson has nearly 160,000 — have become as important as laws passed or write-ups in the local papers, helping a handful of elected officials become media stars even as the arduous work of legislating remains a mostly offline affair. While semi-famous for his online presence, Hudson has a thin legislative record.
He also illustrates the often wide gulf between online and offline personalities. Online, he’s a bombastic pugilist. Offline, Hudson is non-confrontational, awkward, shy even.
Hudson’s posting can transform online bluster into offline fear, however.
After the killing of conservative icon Charlie Kirk, Hudson went on a posting bender that lasted a few days.
Hudson at the time said “war has been declared” on conservatives by progressives.
“If we were shot today, they would be online the next day justifying it,” Hudson said in a Sept. 12 X video, where he became enraged several times and even screamed at the camera.
“Oh, but you know my priority should be bipartisanship and compromise. To hell with that. To hell with that. Not gonna happen. I’ll let other people worry about that. … I’m tilting against my declared enemies. I’m tilting against the people who would celebrate the fact if I died tomorrow. That’s my priority.”
When the Reformer asked his Democratic colleagues in the days after Hudson’s Kirk-posting marathon for comment about his actions, only one was willing to comment, while others feared the potential backlash of his online army.
Since the March 27 incident, Hudson has gone mostly dark, opting to repost other people’s content instead and would only answer written questions from the Reformer.
Hudson said the fallout after his involvement in Engen’s arrest “has been a humbling period of reflection.”
Hudson denied that White Bear officers gave him special treatment, citing his compliance and honesty for their decision not to charge him.
“If you treat law enforcement with abiding respect, they may take that into consideration,” Hudson said, adding that if it were a Democratic colleague who had been caught drinking while carrying a firearm, he would have called it “reckless and irresponsible — exactly as I regarded my own choice in that moment. I’d also commend respectful compliance with law enforcement, as I exhibited.”
The incident, he said, has “prompted serious reflection on how I handle the pressures of this job, including my relationship with alcohol. I’ve owned the poor decisions and am taking concrete steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
The offline Hudson
Hudson grew up in Detroit and moved to Minnesota when he was 12. Detroit to the Twin Cities metro felt like Dorothy entering the land of Oz, he said in his office cubicle during an interview last fall, one of several the Reformer conducted last year after his Charlie Kirk postings.
Mid-conversation, Hudson popped a Zyn nicotine pouch into his mouth while explaining how he ended up in the Legislature.
His father is Black, mother white, and Hudson grew up a Jehovah’s Witness — a sect of Christianity that’s known for its door-to-door efforts to convert others.
“People talk about being colorblind. Jehovah’s Witnesses truly are. The identity of Jehovah’s Witness is your identity. Nothing else matters,” Hudson said.
Hudson left Jehovah’s Witnesses when he was 17, disillusioned with the hypocrisy of some church members, he said. But Hudson never lost his good versus evil worldview, often using words like “evil” to describe positions with which he disagrees.
His father had Democratic-leaning views, rooted in his childhood and the Civil Rights Movement.
“My dad would sit down and try to have ‘the talk’ with me,” Hudson said, referring to the conversation many Black men feel obligated to have with their sons about how to handle police and racism. “His experience was just so different than mine that it never quite clicked. I never felt like I needed to be afraid of the police or I was going to get jumped. That stuff had happened to him. The world changed, and now it’s changed again.”
Hudson’s parents weren’t strong mentors in his life, and he said after graduating high school he had his “lost years” working in security and just getting by. Hudson then met his now-wife, who was attending school in River Falls, Wisconsin.
Hudson spoke about his background while he editing his YouTube videos in his cubicle for about 20 minutes when Engen called. Engen that morning posted a video on social media that highlighted allegations against his Republican colleague, Rep. Ron Kresha, which Kresha had denied. Engen was seeking Hudson’s reassurance that he did the right thing, as the video had understandably rocked the House GOP caucus.
Hudson became involved in politics through the Tea Party movement during the Obama years. Later, he attended his local Republican Party unit and began to caucus.
Long before being elected to the Minnesota House, Hudson discovered the gift of political gab and got himself an AM talk radio program,“Closing Argument with Walter Hudson,” which he has now transitioned to an online video podcast.
If the rule in sales is to always be closing, the rule in talk radio and online politics is to always be talking. Until his recent break, Hudson has abided by it, faithfully.
During Operation Metro Surge, he posted on X one day after federal agents shot and killed Pretti that Pretti had “brandished a gun” and that the public didn’t need a video to prove what had actually happened because “We have an official statement from (the Department and Homeland Security) which has not been disproven.”
(Pretti never brandished the gun and was disarmed when he was shot.)
Hudson’s YouTube video opining about Pretti’s shooting has over 1.6 million views.
Hudson also uses his platforms to demonize transgender people.
“There are many tomboys who are now moms and wives. Taking that future from kids to affirm your ideology is evil,” Hudson posted last year about teen gender-affirming care.
In his office cubicle, Hudson has a photo of the trans activist who disrupted a House GOP hearing last year and screamed at Hudson with a bullhorn. The activist called Hudson a “chicken meatball-headed motherf***er.” An aide made the photo for Hudson’s cubicle, captioned with the words “chicken meatball-headed mother runner,” for a House GOP caucus Kentucky Derby game. That was the name of Hudson’s horse.
Despite hours spent online, Hudson in October told the Reformer that he was transitioning to a more offline lifestyle. Mostly because life online doesn’t pay enough, but he was also starting a nonprofit — the Frederick Douglass Project. The organization aims to reach out to people of color, listen to their needs and advocate for policy proposals aimed at bolstering families and “the dignity of earned success.”
In November, Hudson traveled to the Center of the American Experiment’s St. Cloud chapter’s “patriot party.” The event began at 6 p.m. Hudson arrived about a half hour late clutching a walker. He tore a ligament in his knee and was scheduled for surgery the next week.
He spoke to a few people, stood near the bar and waited for the announcer to call him up to give his speech.
Hudson told the room of about 150 attendees that Minnesota Republicans were winning because of the aggressive oversight of the House’s fraud committee and bragged that House Republicans were able to stomp on Walz’s hopes for a special session on gun control after the Annunciation shooting.
“Our tie doesn’t feel fantastic,” he said, referring to the power-sharing in the House, “but I gotta tell you, it feels a hell of a lot better than the trifecta did. That is a cause for celebration,” Hudson said.
When his speech was over, other GOP lawmakers and attendees mingled. Hudson snuck out. He said the pain in his knee was too much and he had to go, but it was tempting to think he just wanted to get back to his computer to resume posting.
Hudson said his posting and video content pulling back the curtain of the Legislature has helped Minnesotans better understand their government.
“I hate the fakery — I want actual debate and real representation,” Hudson said.
He wrote to the Reformer that he’s taking a temporary hiatus from posting his opinions on social media.
Look for it to end with real-time reactions about this very story.
