June 17 EST: When tragedy struck in Minnesota last week, the public response followed a grimly familiar rhythm: grief, shock, and — almost immediately — the scramble to assign blame. But few moved faster or with less caution than Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), who turned the killing of State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband into a partisan talking point within hours.
In a pair of now-deleted posts on X, Lee blamed the shootings on “Marxists” and mocked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz with a pun-laced jab — “Nightmare on Waltz Street.” The insinuation was clear: the violence, which also left State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife hospitalized, was somehow rooted in left-wing ideology.
Except it wasn’t.
According to law enforcement and media reports, the alleged gunman, Vance Boelter, held conservative, pro-Trump beliefs — a profile that directly contradicts Lee’s narrative. But the truth, as is often the case in the social media era, lagged behind the outrage.
A Dangerous Reflex
Lee’s posts drew instant backlash — not just from Democrats, but from within his own party. Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN), still reeling from the loss of a longtime colleague, confronted Lee directly. “Joking about an assassin killing people is beyond the pale,” she later told The Guardian. Others, including Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, joined the chorus, calling the remarks reckless and inappropriate.
To be clear, Lee isn’t a fringe actor. He’s a sitting U.S. senator, a former clerk to Justice Samuel Alito, and one of the more ideologically fluent figures on Capitol Hill. That makes the decision to lob culture-war grenades in the wake of political violence not just cruel, but calculated. It wasn’t a gaffe — it was a posture.
Deleted, But Not Forgotten
The posts were eventually deleted. But unlike other social media misfires that come with damage control, Lee offered no public apology, no walk-back, no clarification. His office declined to comment to multiple outlets. In political terms, that’s not just silence — it’s defiance.
There’s precedent here. Lee has long trafficked in a brand of libertarian-inflected populism that prizes provocation. But this episode seems to have crossed a line, if only because the facts moved quickly and left him exposed. The shooter’s right-wing affiliations, coupled with the emotional rawness of the moment, rendered Lee’s claims indefensible — and, critically, indefensible within his own coalition.
More Than a Social Media Mistake
This isn’t just about a tweet. It’s about a reflex — a willingness to capitalize on tragedy to score ideological points, even before basic facts are known. That tendency isn’t unique to Lee, but his case is unusually stark: a lawmaker using a mass killing as an opening to attack a governor he ideologically opposes, only to go silent once the narrative collapsed.
It’s also a case study in how the machinery of digital politics can spin into motion before journalism — or even law enforcement — catches up. As Axios reported, Lee’s claims were quickly screenshotted and amplified by partisan influencers, even as the true motives of the shooter were still being confirmed.
This, in turn, feeds a larger pattern: the exploitation of national trauma not for truth-seeking or policy change, but for micro-targeted engagement. The posts may be gone, but the algorithm already worked.
Safety, Scrutiny, and What Comes Next
Meanwhile, the actual issues behind the tragedy — political violence, security for elected officials, the doxing of public addresses — remain unresolved. Several lawmakers are now pushing for legislation to remove personal address data from public rolls. Some are calling for new funding for state-level lawmaker protection, echoing concerns that the line between fringe threat and real violence has grown dangerously thin.
As for Lee, it’s unclear whether this will amount to more than a bad news cycle. There are few mechanisms for internal accountability in the Senate, and no indication yet that party leadership will act.
But in political terms, the cost may already be paid. Lee’s refusal to acknowledge the harm or revise his rhetoric hasn’t just offended the opposition — it has unsettled allies who increasingly worry that their party’s message discipline has eroded into impulse.
And in a year where political violence is no longer theoretical, those impulses matter. A lot.
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A political science PhD who jumped the academic ship to cover real-time governance, Olivia is the East Coast's sharpest watchdog. She dissects power plays in Trenton and D.C. without bias or apology.
