The Road Not Taken

By Brent E. Zepke, Esq.

Jan 15, 2026

Robert Frost conveyed a great deal of wisdom in his poem “The Road Not Taken,” which begins:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

In presidential elections the road typically taken is to elevate the vice president to president along with the choice of a vice president, which in 2024 would have led to President Kamala Harris and Vice President Tim Walz.

That was the “road not taken.”

Instead, voters chose the “road less traveled” in that they elected a candidate who had been impeached twice, charged and convicted in New York of imaginary crimes, had the FBI pretend to have cause to raid his home with a SWAT team, falsely accused of everything imaginable by commentators on every channel besides Fox, a Special Counsel, lying politicians such as Adam Schiff, banned from Facebook and Twitter, canceled by banks like JPMorgan, and shot: Donald Trump and his choice for Vice President JD Vance.

What did the U.S. avoid by choosing “The Road not Taken?”

Tim Walz

Undoubtedly the reason Ms. Harris selected Governor Tim Walz as her vice president was because she hoped he would bring to the U.S. the same policies he had brought to Minnesota.

What were Walz’s policies in Minnesota?

The Biden-Harris duo aided by a Democrat congress gave billions of dollars to the state agencies of Minnesota “to help children.” Those Minnesota agencies spread the federal taxpayer money around varies enterprises without any attempt to audit, monitor, or control, the use of the money. There is evidence that some of the money may have found its way back to the politicians.

The lack of involvement of the Walz team in investigating the fraud was demonstrated when young amateur reporter Nick Shirley exposed it through a 42-minute video.

The immediate reaction of the Walz team began with denial and the mainstream media declined to report it.

Then, a New York Post reporter went to the Quality Learing (sic) Center in Minneapolis, one of the Somali-owned businesses exposed by Shirley. Yes, the owners of this so-called business apparently could not spell the word “learning” correctly.

The extension of the fraud could amount to $9 billion or more and may still be growing. Much of this fraud centers on social service programs like day care centers, and transportation to the doctor, but there are no kids, there are no rides being given, there is just fraud, often tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars at a time.

Governor Walz shifted to blaming the federal government for not stopping the fraud. Since it was perpetrated under Biden-Harris, he is apparently blaming them.

Sooner or later Walz would work his way to blaming Trump even though Donald Trump was a private citizen during much of the Minnesota fraud.

On January 5, 2026, the potential vice president Walz withdrew his candidacy for governor as even the far-left citizens of Minnesota would not vote for him to lead them as governor.

Kamala Harris

The first question to ask is, “Was Ms. Harris unaware of the fraud under Governor Walz when she selected him or was that why she selected him?

The second question is, “When Ms. Harris said she could not remember anything that she wished the Biden-Harris team had done differently, was she referring to the following or simply unaware?

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) own Fiscal Year 2025 Agency Financial Report, during the Biden-Harris term more than $5 billion in rental assistance payments during their final year were flagged as “questionable” or improper, exposing systemic failures, nonexistent oversight, and breathtaking incompetence at the federal level.

Buried in the HUD report is a stunning admission that federal systems failed to stop payments to 30,054 dead people who were either still listed as active tenants or continued receiving rental assistance after their deaths; thousands more went to recipients who were never eligible.

Ms. Harris, as the former D.A. of San Francisco, Attorney General of California, and senator for California, could be expected to bring “California values” into the presidency.

California Values

A recent California audit indicated that an estimated “$72 billion” may have been bilked from taxpayers, and that is according to Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom’s own auditor.

Social services appear to be at the heart of the alleged theft. For example, payment errors in food assistance benefits could cost the state as much as $2.5 billion in federal funds, according to the report.

There is also a bullet train to nowhere that has wasted a great deal of money. How much money? So much that not only did President Trump pull federal funding but even the California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who recently bragged that he had filed 100 lawsuits against the president in the 47 weeks of the Trump presidency, has dropped his suit over the funding of the train to nowhere.

Have you noticed how Bonta’s more than two lawsuits a week have increased affordability in California?

Neither have I.

Even California Democrat Representative Ro Khanna said, “The scale of fraud in Sacramento with the IG report of $72 billion is staggering. Waste and fraud during COVID, with infrastructure projects, and services. We need bold new leadership that will clean up Sacramento.”

Nevertheless, California voters just voted to extend their policies through President Harris and probably will try again in 2028 with Harris or Gavin Newsom.

However, in the November 2024 elections, the California vote was “The Road Not Taken” in the rest of the country, who followed the wisdom of the last stanza of Robert Frost’s poem:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.