Mike Lee has in recent years become one of the Senate's most prolific social media posters, his presence seen in thousands of posts, often late at night, about politics. Fellow senators have grown accustomed to the Utah Republican's pugnacious online persona, mostly brushing it off in the name of collegiality.
That is, until this past week.
His posts, after the June 14 fatal shooting of a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband, incensed Lee's colleagues, particularly senators who were friends with the victims. It all added to the charged atmosphere in the Capitol as lawmakers once more confronted political violence in America.
As the Senate convened for the week, Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., marched past a crowd of reporters and headed toward the Senate floor: "I can’t talk right now, I have to go find Sen. Lee."
Smith, whose name was listed in the suspected shooter’s notebooks recovered by law enforcement officials, spoke to Lee for several minutes. The next day, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., did the same. By midday Tuesday, Lee had deleted his tweets.
“I would say he seemed surprised to be confronted,” Smith later told reporters.
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The shooting unfolds
On the morning of June 14, Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., announced that former state House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, had been shot and killed in their home outside Minneapolis. Another Democratic lawmaker, state Sen. John Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette, were critically injured, in a shooting at their home nearby.
The next day, as police searched for the shooter, Lee posted a photo of the alleged shooter with the caption “Nightmare on Waltz street" — an apparent misspelled attempt to shift blame toward Walz, who was his party's vice presidential nominee in 2024.
In a separate post on his personal account, @BasedMikeLee, the senator shared photos of the alleged suspect alongside the caption: “this is what happens When Marxists don’t get their way.”
On his official Senate social media account, Lee was “condemning this senseless violence, and praying for the victims and their families.”
A spokesperson for Lee did not respond to a request for comment.
The man arrested, Vance Luther Boelter, 57, held deeply religious and politically conservative views. After moving to Minnesota about a decade ago, Boelter volunteered for a position on a state workforce development board, first appointed by then-Gov. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, in 2016, and later by Walz.
Boelter has been charged with two counts of murder and two of attempted murder.
Lee's online posts draw bipartisan backlash
Once a critic of Donald Trump, Lee has since become one of the president’s most loyal allies. Lee's online persona is well established, but this year it has become especially prominent: a Salt Lake Tribune analysis found that in the first three months of 2025, Lee averaged nearly 100 posts per day on X.
What was different this time was the backlash came not just from Democrats.
To Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., Lee's posts were “insensitive, to say the least, inappropriate, for sure” and “not even true.”
“I just think whenever you rush to a judgment like this, when your political instincts kick in during a tragedy, you probably should realign some priorities,” Cramer said.
Republican state Rep. Nolan West wrote on social media that his respect for Lee had been “rescinded.”
A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., did not respond to a request for comment.
Last Monday night, after Smith’s confrontation with Lee, a senior member of her staff sent a pointed message to Lee's office.
“It is important for your office to know how much additional pain you’ve caused on an unspeakably horrific weekend,” wrote Ed Shelleby, Smith's deputy chief of staff. He added, “I pray that Senator Lee and your office begin to see the people you work with in this building as colleagues and human beings.”
Lee avoided reporters for much of the week, though he did tell them he had deleted the posts after a “quick” discussion with Klobuchar. Lee has not apologized publicly.
"We had a good discussion, and I’m very glad he took it down,” Klobuchar said at a news conference.
Tragedy prompts reflection in Congress
The uproar came at a tense time for the Senate, which fashions itself as a political institution that values decorum and respect.
Senators are under intense pressure to react to the Trump administration’s fast-paced agenda and multiple global conflicts. Republicans are in high-stakes negotiations over the party’s tax and spending cuts plan. Democrats are anxious about how to confront the administration, especially after federal agents briefly detained Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., at a recent Department of Homeland Security news conference in California.
Lawmakers believe it’s time to lower the temperature.
“I don’t know why Mike took the comments down, but it was the right thing to do,” said Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M. “I appreciate my Republican colleagues who were very clear with their observations. And those that spoke up, I want to commend them."
He added: “We just all have to talk to each other. And what I learned from this week is people need to lean on each other more, and just get to know each other more as well."
This sotry was written by Joey Cappelletti and Matt brown of the Associated Press with a contribution from Mary Clare Jalonick
