Early on Saturday morning, a gunman tried to kill state Democratic Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, at their Minnesota home. Soon after, according to law enforcement, the same gunman shot and killed Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, at their nearby home.
On Sunday night, the alleged assassin, Vance Boelter, was found armed and crawling in a field in a sparsely populated stretch of Minnesota. Soon after, Gov. Tim Walz told the public, “After a two-day manhunt, two sleepless nights, law enforcement have apprehended” the alleged shooter. The Minnesota Democrat went on to say, “This cannot be the norm. It cannot be the way that we deal with our political differences.”
“Melissa Hortman was the core of who our values were,” the governor added. “It’s not about hatred. It’s not about mean tweets. It’s not about demeaning someone. It’s leading with grace and compassion and vision and compromise and decency.”
Walz’s comments came hours after Donald Trump was asked whether he was prepared to call Walz in the wake of the murders. “Well, it’s a terrible thing,” the president told ABC News before quickly adding, “I think he’s a terrible governor. I think he’s a grossly incompetent person. But I may, I may call him, I may call other people, too.”
The comments were a timely reminder that when it comes to Trump and his allies, grace and compassion and vision and compromise and decency are too often in short supply.
The problem, however, was not limited to the president. As MSNBC’s Cynthia Miller-Idriss noted, one prominent right-wing social media personality publicly speculated about whether Minnesota’s Democratic governor had unleashed an “assassin” and “ordered the political hit against a rival who voted against Walz’s plan to give free healthcare to illegals.” Elon Musk similarly blamed the “far left” for the slayings.
As is often the case, the conspiratorial ugliness quickly spread from the Republican base to Republican officials. Commenting on the murders, Sen. Bernie Moreno wrote online, “The degree to which the extreme left has become radical, violent, and intolerant is both stunning and terrifying.”
As HuffPost noted, one of Moreno’s far-right colleagues went even further.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is facing criticism over social media posts mocking this weekend’s deadly shootings in Minnesota targeting Democratic lawmakers. While the suspected killer was still on the run … Lee fired off a series of messages. … One suggested the suspect, Vance Boelter, was into “Marxism,” despite reports that he was a religious conservative who had attended rallies in support of President Donald Trump.
In a separate online item, Lee showed a photo of the alleged shooter in a mask, alongside the senator’s message that read, “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” in apparent reference to Walz.
Lee then pinned one of his tweets — which read, “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” referring to the deadly shootings — to the top of his feed for special emphasis.
The obvious problem with garbage like this is that it’s factually wrong: Everything we now know so far about the alleged gunman suggests that he was an anti-abortion Trump voter, not a far-left Marxist.
Similarly, it’s worth appreciating the increasingly toxic political framing that’s become a staple of heartbreaking circumstances like these: When there’s political violence, and the target is a Republican, partisans on the right see it as evidence that the left is dangerous. And when there’s political violence, and the target is a Democrat, partisans on the right still see it as evidence that the left is dangerous. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that Lee’s trajectory is emblematic of a larger and unsettling pattern. In the not-too-distant past, the Utah Republican presented himself as something of a conservative intellectual. He withdrew his Trump endorsement ahead of Election Day 2016, and there was even some discussion that the senator wanted to be considered for the U.S. Supreme Court. But that was before his descent. A couple of years ago, Lee started amplifying weird allegations from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ InfoWars website. Soon after, the GOP senator endorsed baseless Jan. 6 conspiracy theories. In the months that followed, he pushed AI-generated misinformation as if it were real. Now, as Bloomberg News’ Steven Dennis noted, the Utahn has been reduced to “online trolling on assassinations.” To appreciate the tragedy of Republican politics in the Trump era, look no further than the devolution of Mike Lee.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post
Recommended
