The Right Gets Heartburn Over Tim Walz Joking About Spicy Food

Nikki McCann Ramirez
·3-min read

Tim Walz seems too nice, too relatable, and too down-to-earth. He must be harboring a dark secret and Republicans have found it: Tim Walz has a “white guy” tolerance for spicy food.

On Thursday, the Harris-Walz campaign released a lengthy video of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz having a one-on-one conversation about their interests, lives, and past careers — and their culinary preferences.

“Like, I have white guy tacos,” Walz tells Harris at the beginning of the conversation.

“What does that mean? Like mayonnaise and tuna?” Harris asks.

Walz clarifies that it’s basically “ground beef and cheese.”

“Black pepper is the top of the spice level in Minnesota,” he joked.

The exchange was some harmless fun between two running mates, but to Republicans scrambling to find a new line of attack against the affable Walz, the revelation that Walz isn’t too keen on capsaicin and his characterization of Minnesota cuisine as spiceless was nothing less than a blatant example of anti-white racism and stereotyping. Move aside convicted felons, puppy killers, and fraudsters, this is unquestionably the most damning admission made by a politician in American history.

Daily Wire Founder Ben Shapiro wrote on X, formerly Twitter, “See, folks, it’s funny that white people hate spices! Not racist at all! Just funny! (FACT CHECK: Europeans liked spices so much that they literally got involved in several hundred years of war in order to determine control of the spice trade.)”

His co-worker, Matt Walsh, described the exchange between Harris and Walz as “ blatant anti-white racism.”

“Imagine if Donald Trump said that a “black guy taco” was made with fried chicken and watermelon. Nuclear meltdown,” he added.

New York Post Columnist Miranda Divine even described Walz as “the Uncle Tom of white rural males.”

Some conservatives attempted to “gotcha” Walz for once touting his award-winning recipe for hotdish — a staple casserole-style cuisine of the Midwest — as evidence that he was lying about his spice tolerance.

“Geezus. On a hunch I thought. Hmmm I wonder if Tim Walz is lying about how people in Minnesota don’t season their food,” Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich wrote on X.

“He won a recipe contest in 2016.”

Walz has multiple award-winning hotdish recipes, but his 2016 “Tim’s Turkey Taco Tot Hotdish” recipe included diced mild green chilies, medium taco sauce, and two teaspoons of chili powder. While it’s probably his most adventurous take on hotdish, the overall result remains a decidedly mild baked concoction dominated by its traditional use of ground meat (turkey in this case), cream of mushroom soup, tater tots, and cheese. Walz also has a more traditional “Turkey Trot” variation of his recipe which features nothing that could be misconstrued as spicy.

Much like Trump thinking the legal process of asylum might have some correlation to Hannibal Lecter, it seems that conservatives may have confused the “hot” in “hotdish” to mean “spicy” rather than something served hot after being baked in an oven.

“There’s no universe where hotdish is spicy in a traditional sense because it’s mostly cream of mushroom soup,” one Minnesota native told Rolling Stone. “If he’s putting hot sauce in it he’s probably improving it, to be honest.”

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