Shamelessness is not his superpower
Sen. Mike Lee (R) of Utah is catching hell for his tweets over the weekend making fun of the double murder of a Minnesota state legislator and her spouse, and the gunshot wounding of another legislator and his spouse. Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith was having none of it. She sought out Lee and got into his face over the pain he’d caused her, deceaseds’ families, and the survivors and their families.
From Semafor:
Smith pulled Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee out of a private Republican meeting to discuss what she called the “painful” effects of Lee’s tweets about the weekend shooting of two state legislators in her home state of Minnesota, one of them a personal friend. And one of Smith’s senior aides emailed top Lee staffers asking in stark terms: “Have you absolutely no conscience? No decency?”
Lee posted a picture of the now-apprehended suspect in the murders of state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, as well as the shooting of a state senator and his wife. The conservative senator added the text “Nightmare on Waltz [sic] Street,” an apparent reference to Gov. Tim Walz; Lee posted another picture of the alleged assassin with the message: “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.”
Smith’s deputy chief of staff, Ed Shelleby, asked Lee’s staffers: “Why would you use the awesome power of a United States Senate Office to compound people’s grief? Is this how your team measures success?”
The New Republic reports that Republicans are frantically trying to paint the alleged shooter as a left-winger:
Vance Boelter allegedly shot and killed Democratic Minnesota state Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Saturday. Hours later, conservatives were twisting Boelter’s political ideology to shield MAGA, claiming that the suspected cop/masked killer was a deranged leftist seeking violent retribution.
n reality, Boelter was a Trump supporter who voted for Donald Trump in November, his best friend David Carlson told reporters Saturday. Boelter was a longtime conservative who was a registered Republican when he and his wife lived in Oklahoma in the early 2000s. He was against abortion rights but “never mentioned any particular anger with the lawmakers who were shot,” Carlson told CNN.
Lauren Windsor noticed that Lee seems to be less of a tough guy wheh the pressure is on. He’s a bit red around the collar.
Smith tells Semafor:
“I wanted him to hear from me directly about how painful that was, and how brutal it was, to see that on what was just a horribly brutal weekend,” Smith told reporters after she confronted Lee, a discussion that left her visibly upset. “He didn’t say a lot, frankly. I think he was a bit stunned.”
“He should think about the implications of what he’s saying,” she added. “It just further fuels this hatred and misinformation.”
A Lee spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
Semafor continues its reporting that Republicans now seem more concerned about their personal safety.
Threats against lawmakers, their family and their staff have more than doubled since 2017, according to the Capitol Police. High-profile attacks and near-misses have become a fixture in Washington. In many cases targeted members receive extra security from Capitol Police, sometimes for months at a time.
I don’t expect Lee will learn anything from the blowback from his tweets.
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