Sen. Mike Lee deletes social media posts about the Minnesota shooting after facing criticism

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, removed posts on his personal X account about Saturday’s fatal attack on a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband after facing fierce backlash from Democrats about the postings.

Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith, a Democrat who was friends with the slain lawmaker, told reporters on Monday that she confronted Lee about his tweet. “I needed him to hear from me directly what impact I think his cruel statement had on me, his colleague,” she said.

Lee had written in one post about the Saturday assassination of Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, that “this is what happens When Marxists don’t get their way.” In another, he posted a photo of the suspect in the case and captioned it, “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” an apparent reference to the state’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz.

Several Democrats had called on Lee to take down the posts, which he’d posted on Saturday and Sunday. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said at a press conference Tuesday he asked Lee to remove them and “he wouldn’t listen to me.”

Some of Lee’s posts about the shooting were still visible as of Tuesday afternoon, including one from Saturday night that said, “Marxism kills.”

On Lee’s official Senate X account, his posts struck a different tone. “These hateful attacks have no place in Utah, Minnesota, or anywhere in America. Please join me in condemning this senseless violence, and praying for the victims and their families,” he wrote.

Prosecutors said the suspect, Vance Boelter, is also responsible for the non-fatal shooting of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said Boelter’s car had notebooks with the names of more than 45 state and federal elected officials, and the federal criminal complaint against him says officials named in the notebooks were “mostly or all Democrats.”

Lee did not answer questions about the posts from NBC News on Monday, and his office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about why they were taken down on Tuesday.

Smith spoke to Lee on Monday and later told reporters she’d felt compelled to confront him about the posts.

“I wanted him to know how much pain that caused me and the other people in my state and I think around the country, who think that this was a brutal attack,” Smith told reporters in the Capitol on Monday.

Smith’s deputy chief of staff, Ed Shelleby, also lambasted the posts in an email to Lee’s office shared with NBC News.

“Is this how your team measures success? Using the office of US Senator to post not just one but a series of jokes about an assassination—is that a successful day of work on Team Lee?,” Shelleby wrote.