Mike Lee confronted by Minnesota colleague over shooting comments

[LetMyPeopleVote]

23. Mike Lee deletes posts about Minnesota lawmaker shootings after blowback

Mike Lee needs to apologize or resign

Link to tweet

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5355192-mike-lee-posts-minnesota-shootings/

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) on Tuesday deleted social media posts he made blaming the left for the fatal shooting of a Minnesota state legislator.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the posts that seemingly made light of the shootings that killed state Rep. Melissa Hortman (D) and her husband and wounded state Sen. John Hoffman (D) and his wife were gone from the Utah Republican’s @BasedMikeLee account.

One post from over the weekend had dubbed the killing the “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” an apparent reference to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), while the other said that: “This is what happens When Marxists don’t get their way.”

The move came after intense blowback from Democrats. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) publicly called on Lee to take down the posts and urged President Trump and Republicans to do the same, arguing that Lee might listen to them.

“I asked him to do it yesterday,” Schumer said at a morning press conference, calling the posts “disgusting.”

On Monday, Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), a friend of Hortman’s, confronted Lee prior to a Senate GOP conference meeting about the party’s massive tax bill. She told reporters that she wanted him to hear from her directly “about how painful that was and how brutal that was to see that on what was just a horrible, brutal weekend.”

“I think too often in the Senate we talk to each other through one another and I wanted him to hear it from me directly,” she said.