Two Minnesota GOP Senate leaders called on Gov. Tim Walz to apologize for remarks he made earlier this week in which they claim he compared Republicans to “fascists and Nazis.” 

The Walz remarks were secretly recorded at a private event where he spoke to members of the Minnesota Nurses Association. “You know I see the pundits on TV, what’s wrong with the Democratic Party?” Walz said to the group. “What’s wrong is our country’s being stole by fascists and Nazis and we’re trying to do all we can.” The remarks were met with applause.

At a time when antisemitism is on the rise, we should be focusing on unity and understanding,” said Sen. Julia Coleman, R-Waconia. “Not reckless comparisons that diminish historical atrocities.”

Coleman and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson called on Walz to apologize.

“Apologize to them?” Walz asked when reporters asked about the remarks at a news conference about health insurance. Walz says he wasn’t talking about the Trump administration or Republicans but rather about actual Nazis who’ve demonstrated in various American cities.

“We have folks in Lincoln Heights, Ohio, wearing and calling themselves Nazis walking in the streets asking to take over that city council and the way they govern there,” Walz said. “They’re asking me to apologize because of that?”

In 2022, Walz and other Democrats asked Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen to apologize for comparing Walz’s COVID-19 policies to the rise of Hitler. “Then there was the book ban, the book burning, and it kept growing and growing and a guy named Hitler kept growing in power,” Jensen said in 2022.

Walz criticized the comments as “dangerous.”

“This is a dangerous analogy,” Walz told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS in a 2022 interview. “Scott can have a difference with me on policies we do and debate that. But the minimizing of the Holocaust is incredibly dangerous.”

This isn’t the first time Walz stirred controversy by talking about Nazis. In January, Elon Musk threatened to sue Walz when the governor said in a national TV interview that he believed Musk made a Nazi salute during a Trump inaugural event.