Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has deleted is controversial social media posts appearing to mock the fatal shooting of a state Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota and the wounding of another.
Early Saturday morning, Vance Boelter, a Trump voter, shot state Sen. John Hoffman (D) and his wife Yvette multiple times in their home in Champlin. They are both now awake after surgery. He then went to the home of former Speaker Melissa Hortman (D), where he shot and killed her and her husband Mark.
In a series of posts on X, Lee joked about the attack, writing in one post with an image of the murder suspect, “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” attempting to connect Boelter to Walz, with his name misspelled.
He also tried to link Boelter to Democrats writing, “This is what happens…When Marxists don’t get their way.”
Both posts were deleted from Lee’s account one day after Sen. Tina Smith confronted the Republican about the them.
“I wanted him to know how much pain that caused me and the other people in my state and I think around the country, who think that this was a brutal attack,” Smith told reporters in the Capitol, according to NBC News.
“I don’t know whether Sen. Lee thought fully through what it was, you’d have to ask him, but I needed him to hear from me directly what impact I think his cruel statement had on me, his colleague,” she added.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), told MSNBC on Monday that she also planned on talking to Lee and condemned his comments.
“I’ll tell him about the law enforcement that did incredible work here,” Klobuchar said. “That’s what I’m going to tell Sen. Lee when I get back to Washington today. Because this is not a laughing matter and certainly what we are seeing in increasing violence and this evil man who did this, this is not a joke.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also publicly called on Lee to take down the posts.
On Tuesday, Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, also criticized Lee for the post, telling reporters that the comments “seems insensitive, to say the least, inappropriate, for sure” and “not even true.”
“I don’t know if this person was a Marxist or not,” Cramer added. “I have no sense. Nor does it matter, by the way, nor does it matter. I mean … what happened is absolutely, positively unacceptable in any political environment, and it’s tragic.”
