Lisa Zarza told Newsmax on Tuesday that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's pandemic policies made her lose her businesses and have put her through such hardships that she is leaving the state she has lived in almost her entire life.
"God help us all if he is in the White House and has anything to say with what goes on in our country," Zarza told "Wake Up America."
"I owned a restaurant, two restaurants in Minnesota ... and when the entire nation was shut down on March 17, 2020, we all shut down like every American" at the start of the pandemic.
"We reopened about 2 1/2 months later, and everything was going fine, we were at about 50%," she said, but then Walz as governor shut down restaurants again except for take-out as of Nov. 20 — a week before Black Friday.
Zarza said that about a month later about 200 bar owners decided to fight the mandates, as many other states had not shut down again, and that she was 1 of 10 that eventually reopened on Dec. 16.
She said her punishment for doing so went way beyond the penalties stated in the executive order.
"I lost both my restaurants, I had all my licenses stripped. I was revoked for having a license in the state of Minnesota for five years.
"I never thought I was above the law. I just thought I was an American who deserved to have equal treatment across the board," Zarza said.
"I don't want to be in Minnesota anymore. I bought a restaurant in Wisconsin two years ago, and I have been commuting two hours a days since then ... in seven months the lease on my house will be up, and I am leaving Minnesota."
Zarza said Walz pretends that he is for the people, but that he is not and did not do anything during the pandemic to protect business owners, children, or other residents that needed help.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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