Politico Reporter Implies Somali Daycare Center Owners Could Justifiably Shoot People for Asking Questions
The point here is that the media despises people who do their jobs for them, especially when it makes Democrats look bad.
Josh Gerstein of Politico is facing an avalanche of critical responses on Twitter/X over a post he published on Monday night in which he implied that Somali daycare centers might start justifiably shooting people for knocking on their doors and asking questions, under ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws.
He was responding to the explosive claims made by independent citizen journalist Nick Shirley and the revelations in his recent viral video exposing hundreds of millions in alleged fraud carried out by Somali-owned daycare centers in Minnesota.
Here is Gerstein’s tweet (it’s a screenshot in case he deletes it):
Liberal journalists support ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws now? That’s good to know, I guess. Of course, Democrat controlled Minnesota doesn’t have SYG laws, but let’s take one thing at a time. Baby steps.
The point here is that the media despises people who do their jobs for them, especially when it makes Democrats look bad. Also, the media will rush to attack and discredit anyone who poses a threat to the left. We have seen this repeatedly over the years.
In 2008, Joe the Plumber asked an innocent question about taxes of then-candidate Barack Obama, who offered a horrible answer that made him look bad. The media responded by attacking Joe the Plumber.
When Democrat Congressman Anthony Weiner was engulfed by a sexting scandal, and Andrew Breitbart broke the story, the media didn’t look into the allegations. They attacked Andrew Breitbart.
This is what they do. They are Democrat operatives first and journalists second. They prove this to us all the time.
The featured image of this post is Josh Gerstein speaking at a 2012 event sponsored by the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service.
The responses to Gerstein’s tweet came in fast and furious.
Babe wake up new entry on the It’s Not Happening meme just dropped https://t.co/PctgfxI3Uw pic.twitter.com/7LkSXRnXC2
— Jarvis (@jarvis_best) December 30, 2025
The senior legal affairs reporter for Politico suggesting "stand your ground" laws means shooting people who knock on the doors of a daycare.
My God. https://t.co/6RWhN2XILo pic.twitter.com/LSX4ViXjwR
— Tony Kinnett (@TheTonus) December 30, 2025
🚨 WTF?! Politico’s “Senior Legal Affairs Reporter” just suggested “daycare centers” might be justified in SHOOTlNG citizen journalists for knocking on their doors
Legacy media is FULL of deranged freaking lunatics.
They’re pissed off that we’ve taken their power away.
Losers. pic.twitter.com/80pOkQuv7b
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) December 30, 2025
"Kill the people who are investigating tax fraud" is quite the take.
— Pounce de León (@RightAllTheTime) December 30, 2025
Stand your ground isn’t castle doctrine, and castle doctrine doesn’t apply to someone just knocking on your door in a peaceful manner.
But we have arrived at journos fantasizing about killing people who uncover welfare fraud. https://t.co/51a6XIRwPK
— Sunny (@sunnyright) December 30, 2025
This isn’t even remotely how stand your ground works and it’s abhorrent and irresponsible that you promote otherwise in your role.
People like you demonize firearm owners while recklessly encouraging people to randomly shoot others for knocking on a door. Unreal. https://t.co/X9ga7BFjHu— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) December 30, 2025
1) Stand Your Ground does not permit the murder of door knockers
2) MN is not a SYG state
3) in no world should Somali fraudsters be encouraged to murder taxpaying US citizens for doing the journalism well-funded reporters refuse to do https://t.co/VOHWNcmD84— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 30, 2025
Lib reporters will literally call for people to be murdered to avoid talking about a left-wing fraud scandal. https://t.co/R0CpK2wEK0
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) December 30, 2025
Liberals really have no idea what “Stand Your Ground” laws actually are do they? https://t.co/2NnjxajAOD
— EducatëdHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) December 30, 2025
*checks to see if the lib state has a stand your ground law* https://t.co/GS6jxBXuph pic.twitter.com/O39H5DYzd8
— Prison Mitch (@Prisonmitch) December 30, 2025
These classic tweets from David Burge, AKA Iowahawk and Jim Treacher are evergreen.
Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 9, 2013
Modern journalism is all about deciding which facts the public shouldn't know because they might reflect badly on Democrats.
— jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) August 18, 2014
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
This is just the latest manifestation of the truism that if leftwingers didn’t have double standards they would have no standards at all.
Sounds like one of those infamous dog whistles that only deranged, desperate Democrats can hear.
The propensity of the left for violence is documented, am much as its propensity for fraud.
No. The media despises people who don’t do the job of making the Democrats look good.
Reporter: You’re the governor. Aren’t you ultimately responsible for the fraud.
Walz: No. It’s Trump’s fault.
Reporter: Trump’s fault. How do you figure that?
Walz: If Trump hadn’t won, I’d be VP right now. And none of this would’ve been in the news.
Let me get this straight. Josh Gerstein is the “Senior Legal Affairs” reporter for POLITICO, but he is not a lawyer.
And yet he has the temerity to call another reporter — who deftly did the job that he wouldn’t do — an “amateur,” while failing to recognize that MN is not a stand-your-ground jurisdiction?
Tossing around the “amateur” label like that puts him in the rarified company of Walter Sobchak.
Please, please, let Josh Gershwin knock on my door….
What an a-hole.
I was thinking the same thing as I read the story, Then I thought well I’m already on double secret probation here for using a naughty word and I decided I’d phrase it as:
“Hey Josh! I got a few doors I suggest you knock for a real big juicy story if you’re so inclined”.
I think I am too
How did you find out?
Well I made a comment on a story with only 4 replies. Mine should have been the 5th. The count remained at 4. I could see my comment. I suspect if I logged out I wouldn’t have been able to see unless cookies are involved.
I used a swear word. It’s not surprising my comment got automatically flagged.
Gerstein’s speech makes me feel unsafe, and threatens the hard-earned peace of my tribal community.
Where’s yo shotgun, Paw?
It’s worse. Stand your ground is not a Free Shoot card, it’s not even a defense. Claiming self-defense is a defense. A duty to retreat may or may not be a pillar of that defense. But all 50 states have some sort of castle doctrine, sometimes this includes your place of business. Does Minnesota apply the castle doctrine to your business? I don’t know. Stand your ground is not complicated but it’s deliberately lied about in the media.
So, he could know all this (or enough) and doesn’t care.
Or he’s stupid.
Or he’s both. I think he’s got the skills to be both.
Minnesota only recognized the castle doctrine within the walls of ones home. But Gerstein specified home daycares, as opposed to the ones Nick Shirley investigated, which were supposedly operating in locked and empty commercial buildings.
That makes it much better. He is calling for people to shoot anyone who walks up to someone’s door and knocks which, btw, does not trigger the castle doctrine. I guess he is also calling on daycares operated out of someone’s house to have all the people inside armed and ready to repel invaders in violation of state law which requires all firearms and ammunition in the home be locked in safes.
No, he isn’t. He isn’t calling for anyone to shoot anyone. He’s predicting that with amateurs going around trying to find fraud, someone is going to break into a home daycare, where the castle doctrine applies, and act so as to put the occupants in reasonable fear for their safety.
That’s a completely unrealistic prediction, which has nothing to do with anything Nick Shirley did. But that’s all it is. Don’t lie about it and turn it into something it isn’t.
As for his purpose in making such a stupid and unrealistic prediction, it’s nothing to do with the fraud and everything to do with denigrating SYG and Castle doctrine laws and creating a false impression that they’re dangerous laws to have.
Defending the indefensible, as usual.
Weren’t you leaving?
I had that same question….Maybe he didn’t pass the Psyche exam to work in Antarctica…..
The summer of 2020 would say, “No”.
It should be called “No duty to retreat”, not “Stand your ground”. The media has used SYG to give a negative impression of self defense when using firearms. Another aspect of the media being deceptive in the views they push.
Perhaps a plague of serpents needs to be sent to each and every fraudulent operation as a gentle reminder.
“Joe the Plumber asked an innocent question about taxes of then-candidate Barack Obama, who offered a horrible answer that made him look bad.”
Let’s be fair here. Obama didn’t need any help looking bad, at least not to those of us not enamored of his pant creases (we should have elected his dry cleaner) or his skin color (we should have elected Clarence Thomas). That said, his library is a perfect visual representation of his presidency.
Question for the legal eagles: my take on the Minnesota situation is that the state itself engaged in fraud against the federal government (meaning the rest of us). Is there a means by which we can step in, remove the state government, replace it with a temporary (I don’t know what you’d call him…) governor until the fraud is flushed out, the Somalis are headed back to Somalia and fair elections can be held?
No. First, there’s no evidence that the state itself engaged in fraud. At most some lazy or corrupt inspectors failed to do their jobs.
But even if one could somehow prove that the governor and legislature knowingly conspired to allow this fraud to go on, there is no such recourse.
The only circumstances in which the president could remove a state governor and put the state under administration would be if the state were in open insurrection against the USA (as happened in the Civil War), or if the state were to amend its constitution so that it no longer had a republican form of government (e.g. if it were to abolish the legislature and vest legislative authority in the governor, or if it were to abolish legislative elections and have the governor appoint the legislators).
>>No. First, there’s no evidence that the state itself engaged in fraud. At most some lazy or corrupt inspectors failed to do their jobs.
LOL.
There’s tons of evidence, from the amount of money these “programs” started eating up to the obvious problems with the numbers to the reports by people for years to the most basic facts that these frauds are so overt and obvious.
It’s clear that the somalis are the bag men for the democrats in the mass crime of stealing tens of billions of government funds. Some is clearly returned to dems in campaign kickbacks, other in private money and plain graft. Further, it’s becoming clear that the somalis had a huge hand in helping the dems with the election rigging.
You really have to be intentionally ignorant to even consider the notion that dems were not well aware of the massive fraud going on and who was doing it. You might as well offer up alternative theories that space aliens came down and were filling out the paperwork for the illiterate somalis …
ANd it’s interesting how so many people are claiming – as a fact, evidently – that somalis are king makers in Minnesota. There are only about 80,000 somalis in Minnesota out of a population of 5,800,000. They are mostly uneducated, welfare-dependent, unemployed morons who can barely speak English but they run the politics of the state with so few people (maybe 30,000 total eligible voters out of that lot)? How would that be … unless, maybe they know a ton of dirt about the Minnesota democrats …
You just make up Crap . Maybe Nick will Hire you ???
The sin of omission or commission. The end result is the same: the state failed to audit or even follow up on this fraud, making them accessories, either by intent or incompetence.
His library is a huge middle finger to America.
More of a dogknot.
Concrete gerbil?
The vile, stupid and evil neo-communist/Islamofascist/Muslim supremacist Dhimmi-crats are wretched and despicable totalitarians, to their rotten cores.
It’s not a theory. It’s meant to discourage asking questions because “you don’t know about these people.”
Probably not a good idea to shoot federal agents with a warrant but maybe something to think about when it’s a political reporter at the door.
You mean a Politico reporter. Turnabout is fair play.
well Politico in particular but as guyjones said, the very idea is “vile, stupid, and evil”
Yeah, but the presumption is that Politico “reporters” actually get off their desk chairs and pursue a story.
Never happens.
Josh Gerstein is not.deserving of any grace for his idiotic remarks b/c they weren’t made in good faith. He was trying to burnish his lefty ‘keyboard warrior’ image/ego while simultaneously attacking an ‘amateur’ journalist, who was doing far more meaningful investigative journalism with a higher ultimate impact in a couple days than Mr Gerstein has had over his career. If was acting in good faith he’d have had the self awareness and dignity to resign his job once the internet X backlash formed, instead he tried to walk it back while simultaneously doubling down with a wishy washy weasel worded response.
He needs to go to Walmart for a brain.
Dollar Store. A simple brain would suffice.
91 million meals for 3,000 students over 1.5 year. Seems like that would raise a red flag in both Washington and MN.
A Daycare center for every 3.5 age/eligible child. A daycare facility is not licensed unless there are to be 5 children. The schools were claiming 20 or more each. None of the children English speakers say the licensee. Children born in America, attending English language schools.
I was regional agency head for State law enforcement offices in charge of two fraud divisions. There is no way in the world this was over-looked. These calculations become part of your thinking process when you are in the system. They instantly direct you to the source, the case administrator is immediately summoned and then a file review in office arranged within days with case workers at hand.
This is intentional fraud by Waltz , everyone of his administrators, and the entire Democractic Party all the way up to Biden.
I loved it how they bussed in kids after the koran was let out of the bag
Kickbacks were going back up the ladder to the overseers. That’s the only way the fraud could be overlooked.
💯
Understanding what is happening here. This is their batsignal to the sky.
They are saying to their insane base, ‘shoot one of these guys and a Good Democrat will make sure the jury never convicts you’.
Democrats are proving that they simply don’t care what the law or facts are, there are a significant number of them that will simply not convict a Good Democrat, and there are an equal number that will automatically convict a Bad Conservative.
Is this reporter a DEI hire? Sure seems to be, quite dense in the brain area
Great advice, Josh. Shoot potential (and nonviolent) customers with valid questions about the business.
somalians bringing civil war to america
politico says so it can feel like they are still at home
Politico has always been the same as the Daily Beast, msnbc, cnn, axios, The New Yorker and any left wing publication that li0es or omits the important of any story if it hurts Democrats. As soon as I see the byline, I am no longer interested or read it.
Most of these reactions you cite completely ignore the fact that he specified
“home daycares”. That means the relevant doctrine is not “stand your ground”, which MN doesn’t have, but “castle doctrine”, which it does. In Minnesota, if you are in reasonable fear of death or serious injury and you are inside your home then you have no duty of retreat, even if you could do so with perfect safety, and may instead defend yourself with sufficient force, including deadly force if necessary.
So, yes, Gerstein is quite correct that at some point an amateur effort to knock on doors of home daycares in Minnesota intersects with that state’s castle doctrine.
The point of intersection is when some door-knocker doesn’t take “no” for an answer and tries to break into the home, and the resident inside has a reasonable fear that the home invader intends to kill or injure him, and is capable of doing so. For the fear to be reasonable it must be supported by objective evidence that would make most normal people in that situation share that fear.
There is, of course, no evidence at all that any “amateur door-knocker” is coming even close to that, or is ever likely to. And even seen in the best light he got the name of the relevant law wrong. So the real object here is to reinforce the false and negative image he and his whole industry have deliberately created for “stand your ground” laws.
If someone tries to break into a home daycare I won’t care if they get shot even by a fraudster.
The problem will be that the shooter will immediately be given a pass whereas if the fraudster follows the “amateur door-knocker home” after they knocked and left and gets shot breaking in to the door-knockers house they will prosecute no matter how bad the case against prosecution is. See: Kyle Rittenhouse.
In fact does anyone know what Josh Gerstein had to say about the Rittenhouse case?
I wasn’t able to find anything he’d written about that case, but we can all make an educated guess about what he thinks of it. Namely that Rittenhouse is a bloodthirsty, racist murderer who should have been killed that night, or something to that effect.
I think Gerstein was still in high school back then.
Oh dear God….
Door knocking doesn’t even come close to triggering anything in the castle doctrine. There has to be a larger escalation. Suggesting that door knocking could even lead to lawful use of SYG laws is idiotic beyond compare. The fact that Gerstein doesn’t know the difference between the two laws considering he’s a Senior “Legal Affairs” Reporter is ridiculous. Considering the IQ of the average Somali, a statement from a Senior “Legal Affairs” Reporter that they may be protected under law to shoot a door knocker is dangerous and irresponsible on the part of Gerstein.
“Suggesting that door knocking could even lead to lawful use of SYG laws is idiotic beyond compare.”
Biden advised people to shoot through their front doors. There’s your comparison.
Given recent events, and some wild projection about PRESIDENT Trump (see J6 dog whistles), I don’t think that the virulently violent leftists will catch the nuance.
Just imagine how much serious damage and chaos and destruction could have been avoided in 2020 if Minnesota had had Stand Your Ground laws that allowed business owners to shoot people knocking at their doors (let alone destroying their stores, looting them, and setting them on fire!) … That was a case where owners certainly SHOULD have had the right to actually defend their property against insane, violent, homicidal insurrectionists.
But, instead, Minneapolis was burned down, civil society broke, and the insurrectionist insanity spread across the nation – aided and abetted by Democrat politicians and officials – threatening all of us. Things even went so far as to have American territory ceded by Washington officials!!
And pretty much none of these treasonous, lunatic criminals was arrested, let alone tried and imprisoned. In New York, rigged courts and treasonous government officials even worked it out so that insurrectionists got millions in jury awards because the police tried, in vain, to enforce the law.
But this blithering idiot and AMerica-hater from Politico is claiming that violent Somali invaders (most of whom, it appears, can barely speak English) are justified in shooting people who knock on their doors for public businesses …
Since Josh is such a legal scholar, I assume he can tell us the meaning of the word curtilage, and how it is related to self-defense.
There is no such thing as curtilage in MN. The castle doctrine extends only as far as the walls of the home.
The law does not explicitly mention castle doctrine. In general, MN is a duty-to-retreat state, with an exception for dwellings (which can include a vehicle). It can also include an attached porch, which may be beyond the walls of a dwelling. Whether it is a statutory element or not, curtilage most definitely exists in MN as it does elsewhere.
this sick puppy is trying to incite some moronic immigrant to shoot somebody. somebody should break the teeth out of this lying cu*nts mouth.
heres the catch
the left will have the majority of the seats in the jury box when one of their troopers evokes the doctrine
OJ juries are in vogue
Let the Stand Your Ground party start with Josh Gerstein.
I just did a cursory search – Minnesita does NOT have a “stand your ground” law, theirs is “Duty to retreat”, so unless the knocker is actively pursuing the Somali, it would be against MN law to “Stand”.
It does have a castle doctrine, and he specified home daycares. Which is not where Nick Shirley went at all.
The guy could be Jaimie Raskin’s long lost twin.
Broodmate…
I can’t help but wonder how long it will be until the BlackHawks land in Minnesomalia.
A former Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot an unarmed woman who called 911 to report a possible sexual assault in the alley behind her home was released from prison on parole Monday, months after his murder conviction was overturned and he was resentenced on a lesser charge.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-minneapolis-police-officer-mohamed-noor-released-prison-fatally-sho-rcna35527
Hey! She was armed with a semiautomatic peignoir!
The one without the safety?
Hey Josh, I bet you live in New York City. Things are going to get spicy there starting tomorrow.
Remember, if you look like food, you will be eaten.
Josh looks like pork.
He may actually pull through.
Moron Gerstein’s ugly tie should be enough to convict him of insurrection and inciting violence.