The Republican senator from Utah suggested in social media posts that the killings were the work of “Marxists,” and mocked Minnesota’s Democratic governor. He later issued a more sober condemnation of the violence.
Scarcely 24 hours after a Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota was assassinated in her home, Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, posted a pair of politically charged messages mocking the attack.
“This is what happens When Marxists don’t get their way,” Mr. Lee wrote on Sunday on his personal X account, a message accompanied by photographs of the suspect released by law enforcement officials.
An hour later, in a second post showing the suspect, Mr. Lee wrote: “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” in an apparent reference the Democratic governor of the state, Tim Walz.
By the afternoon, amid outraged responses to his postings, Mr. Lee issued a very different message on his official Senate account in which he hit all of the sober notes one would expect from an elected official reacting to a political assassination.
“These hateful attacks have no place in Utah, Minnesota, or anywhere in America,” Mr. Lee wrote on X. “Please join me in condemning this senseless violence, and praying for the victims and their families.”
But that standard-issue statement came long after his initial derisive posts, in which he appeared to lay responsibility for the shooting at the feet of Democrats and the political left.
