WASHINGTON ― Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) on Tuesday deleted a series of disgusting tweets he posted in response to a gunman assassinating Minnesota Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband.
Lee posted several tweets from his personal account on Saturday, baselessly claiming that the man who went to the homes of four Minnesota state lawmakers with the intent to kill them has ties to the political left.
“This is what happens When Marxists don’t get their way,” the Utah Republican wrote in his first tweet, as details were still emerging on what had even happened.
“Nightmare on Waltz Street,” Lee wrote in his second now-deleted tweet, an apparent and misspelled reference to Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, who was Kamala Harris’ vice presidential running mate last year.
His third now-deleted tweet called Marxism a “deadly mental illness” in response to the Minnesota shootings.
Lee drew widespread condemnation for his posts, including former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele telling him to “grow the hell up” and one Utah PAC calling on Lee to resign over his “sick” and “depraved” comments.
It was initially unclear what drove Lee to delete his posts three days later. They were still up as of early Tuesday afternoon, and a Lee spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
But the Utah Republican later told a Capitol Hill reporter that he deleted his posts after speaking with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).
“It was important to her that I take it down,” Lee told journalist Matt Laslo. “We’re good friends. I took it down.”
Asked about their talk, a Klobuchar spokesperson said only, “They had a good conversation this morning and she is glad he took them down.”
Lee didn’t delete a handful of other inflammatory social media posts that either implicitly or explicitly reference the Minnesota shooting.
“Fact check: TRUE,” he posted Monday on his personal X account, in response to an Elon Musk tweet falsely claiming, “The far left is murderously violent.”
“Marxism kills,” Lee said in another Monday tweet, in response to someone falsely claiming “the left … kills a MN state rep and her husband and injures a Senator and his wife.”
On Saturday, the same day the lawmaker and her husband were assassinated at home, Lee had this to say in response to someone posting about the FBI reviewing the gunman’s cellphone records: “My guess: He’s not MAGA.”
Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) pulled Lee out of a Senate Republican-only meeting on Monday night to talk to him about how “cruel” and “hurtful” his comments were. Beyond the horror of the situation, Smith was also friends with Hortman.
She told HuffPost earlier Tuesday, when Lee’s posts were still up, that the Utah Republican was “sort of shocked” when she pulled him aside to address his posts.
“The point here is that there are consequences to the things that you do in the social media world, as a U.S. senator, and he has a big megaphone,” Smith said. “He’s choosing to use it to spread misinformation and to hurt people.”
Minnesota authorities captured the suspect, Vance Boelter, 57, on Sunday night. They said he had a “hit list” of 45 elected officials, all of whom were Democrats.
Smith was among those on the list.
Asked Tuesday if Lee apologized to her for his posts when they spoke, Smith replied, “Not really.”
Lee isn’t the only Republican senator who’s been fanning inflammatory rhetoric in the aftermath of the Minnesota shootings.
In a social media post that’s still up, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) baselessly claims the Minnesota gunman was a radical leftist.
“The degree to which the extreme left has become radical, violent, and intolerant is both stunning and terrifying,” Moreno wrote Saturday, just hours after the assassinations had taken place.
The Ohio Republican’s tweet was in response to someone sharing a picture of anti-Trump “No Kings” signs allegedly found in the back seat of the gunman’s car. But the gunman’s motive remains unknown. And while he was targeting Democratic lawmakers, his political affiliation is also unknown and irrelevant.
Asked Tuesday about Lee’s tweets, Moreno immediately became belligerent.
“For every Mike Lee comment that you just pointed out, there’s 7,000 times the Democrats have called Trump ‘Hitler,’ ‘a fascist,’ ‘an authoritarian,’” he told HuffPost. “If you had the same level of energy about condemning those, then I would give you a credible answer.”
Asked if that meant he was comfortable with Lee’s posts, Moreno lashed out at the press generally.
“You have no credibility because you turned a blind eye,” he charged, and tried to change the subject to talk about someone in North Carolina.
After some back-and-forth, with Moreno repeatedly refusing to weigh in on Lee’s posts, HuffPost told the senator it seemed like he just didn’t want to answer the question.
“I answered the question for you,” he sniped, before moving on to talk to other reporters. (He did not answer the question.)