Three months ago, a suspected gunman shot and killed Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, at their home in Minnesota. This came immediately after the same suspected shooter tried to kill state Democratic Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said in the immediate aftermath of the attack that it appeared to be a “politically motivated assassination.”

Republicans at the national level did not exactly respond to the tragedy in a responsible way. Despite that everything we now know about the alleged gunman suggests he was an anti-abortion Trump voter and not a far-left radical, several congressional Republicans labeled the suspect a “Marxist” whose alleged crimes constituted an example of “extreme left” violence.

This was ridiculous. It was also, in retrospect, the opposite of how Democratic officials responded to the shooting that claimed Charlie Kirk’s life. It happened anyway — though the Republican response to the Minnesota shooting wasn’t perceived as a national scandal and no one was fired for having said dumb things about the shootings.

In the aftermath of the political violence, Donald Trump said very little about what happened. Indeed, as my MSNBC colleague Zeeshan Aleem explained, “He did not offer a substantial eulogy for her, or deliver an address on political violence, as he did after Kirk’s death. Unlike former President Joe Biden, Trump did not attend the funeral.”

Three months later, a Fox News host characterized Hortman’s death as a “bulls—” example of political violence. Also on Monday, Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested that the suspect in Minnesota came from the left, not the right, despite all of the available evidence.

And then, of course, there was the president himself.

“In retrospect, given all of the moving ways that this White House has paid tribute to Charlie Kirk,” a reporter asked Trump, “do you think it would’ve been fitting to lower the flags to half-staff when Melissa Hortman, the Minnesota House speaker, was gunned down by an assassin as well?”

The president replied, “I’m not familiar. The who?”

Reminded of an incident he ought to have been familiar with, Trump said of lowering the flags, “Well, if the governor had asked me to do that, I would’ve done that. But the governor of Minnesota didn’t ask me.”

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For all of Trump’s comments in recent days about political violence, that he appeared to have no idea who Hortman was suggests the president hasn’t exactly done a full accounting of the broader national scourge.

For that matter, leaders don’t generally wait to be asked to do the right and honorable thing.

But let’s also not brush past the relevant details: In the aftermath of the political violence in Minnesota, Trump thought it’d be a good idea to lash out publicly at Walz — who might’ve requested lowering flags, but whom the president refused to contact.

“Why would I call him? I could call and say, ‘Hi, how you doing?’ The guy doesn’t have a clue,” Trump said of Walz at the time. “He’s a mess. So I could be nice and call, but why waste time?”

The Republican added, “I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out, I’m not calling him.”

It’s worth appreciating the differences between the president’s reaction to Kirk’s death and how he responded to Hortman and her husband being killed.

As Aleem concluded, “In a democracy, all political violence should be considered entirely unacceptable, no matter the ideology of the person committing the act or on the receiving end of it. Both the deaths of Hortman and Kirk were terrible tragedies and completely unjustifiable. But in his selective mourning and politicization of their deaths, Trump suggested one tragedy — more importantly, one type of tragedy — mattered more.”