UPDATE (June 17, 1:44 p.m. ET): At some point following his confrontation with Sen. Tina Smith on Monday, Sen. Mike Lee deleted his social media posts about the Minnesota shootings.
Over the weekend, as the political world was reeling from the shootings of two Democratic state legislators in Minnesota, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, took to social media — and is so often the case, posted something deeply inappropriate.
The three-term lawmaker posted a picture of the suspect, Vance Boelter, with the caption “This is what happens. When Marxists don’t get their way.” Twenty-five minutes later, he posted another picture of the suspect with the caption “Nightmare on Waltz Street.” This appears to be a misspelled reference to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee.
Even though he holds the full-time job of senator, it’s not unusual for Lee to post dozens of times a day.
Both posts were met with avalanches of outrage: Lee appeared to be not only mocking the shootings but also blaming the left for them (Boelter has since been identified as a strong supporter of President Donald Trump and a right-wing opponent of abortion). But for those who regularly follow Lee’s X feed, none of this should come as a surprise.
Even though he holds the supposedly full-time job of senator, it’s not unusual for Lee to post dozens of times a day. On Thursday alone, he published close to 40 posts. Few of those had anything to do with his day-to-day responsibilities as Utah’s senior senator (in fact, he rarely mentions his home state on the feed).
Perhaps his favorite talking point is one that ordinary Americans were introduced to over the weekend: labeling Democrats and liberals as Marxists. In just the past week, he has wielded the epithet against both leaders of and participants in the No Kings marches, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and anti-ICE protesters He has in recent weeks claimed that the U.S. Agency for International Development has been funding Marxist causes for years, suggested that Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, is a Marxist and accused Marxists/liberals/Democrats of fetishizing sexual violence, loving eugenics and (ironically, considering his posts about the violence in Minnesota) “dividing people and sowing division.”
And while millions protested Trump at “No Kings” demonstrations, Lee was on X, telling his followers that “every American should watch” a new documentary called “Beneath Sheep’s Clothing,” which claims to give viewers “a clearer understanding of the Marxist playbook to destroy America’s culture.”
What is particularly terrifying about Lee’s unhinged social media presence is that he wasn’t always like this.
Back in 2016, he did more than just oppose Trump’s nomination as the GOP’s standard-bearer. As The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta chronicled, at that year’s Republican convention, Lee tried “to sabotage Donald Trump’s nomination for president.”
When Lee’s conscience collided with his political ambitions, the latter won out.
“First, he maneuvered his way onto the convention’s rule-making committee,” Alberta wrote. “Then, he led a push by Never Trumpers to unbind the convention’s delegates—that is, to release them from their obligation to vote for Trump as the party’s nominee.”
But as with most Republicans, when Lee’s conscience collided with his political ambitions, the latter won out. After Trump claimed the nomination and eventually the presidency, Lee got in line behind his party leader (unlike Utah’s other senator at the time, Mitt Romney). In 2019, he played a key role in guiding Senate Republicans during Trump’s first impeachment trial. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, he actively plotted with White House officials to keep Trump in office, even endorsing and recommending lawyers John Eastman and Sidney Powell to Trump’s then-chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
Then, in 2022, he launched his “BasedMikeLee” account on Twitter, as X was then known — the launching pad for his latest incarnation as a full-time Twitter troll and occasional public official. His posts resemble those of a frequent user on right-wing message boards rather than those of a U.S. senator. Lee regularly reposts far-right media figures, lustily attacks Democrats and liberals, proudly spreads misinformation and promotes deranged conspiracy theories. In the last week, when not labeling Democrats and liberals “Marxists” or suggesting that anti-Trump protests are a psy-op operation supported by China, he called a protest blocking cars on a California freeway “an act of war against the U.S” and said the government of Mexico should reimburse the United States for recent troop deployments in Los Angeles.
Is this merely an over-the top effort to win over Trump’s MAGA supporters, or has Lee fully embodied the dark side of Republican politics nine years after trying to hold it back? It’s impossible to say. But according to Alberta, “to hear Lee’s friends, allies, and former staffers tell it—and they did, by the dozens, though many requested anonymity to avoid retaliation from the senator—Lee is all but unrecognizable.” What we can say with certainty is that Lee’s embrace of far-right social media trolling has brought no political consequences. He won re-election in 2022 (albeit in a surprisingly close race), and his approval rating in Utah stands at 46% to 33% disapproval — not great, but certainly good enough. And though more and more evidence continues to emerge that Boelter was a Trump supporter, Lee appears unchastened. On Monday afternoon, he responded to a two-day-old post from Elon Musk calling the far left “murderously violent” by writing “Fact Check: TRUE.” Lee’s posts are right in line with the views of the president, who on Monday said on Truth Social, “Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities.” None of his Republican colleagues appear to have had anything to say about Lee’s posts. But Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., did track him down. “I wanted him to know how much pain that caused me and the other people in my state,” she told reporters afterwards. “I’ll leave it to Senator Lee to answer how he took my comments. I think that honestly, he seemed a little surprised to be confronted.” Whether Lee caused that pain out of craziness or cynicism is irrelevant. As long as he’s full MAGA, trolling liberals and pushing misinformation and conspiracy theories — no matter how outrageously or inappropriately — there’ll be a place for him in Donald Trump’s Republican Party.
Michael A. Cohen is a political writer and a fellow with the Eurasia Group Foundation. 
