The MAGA mind virus
Mike Lee has a really bad case, and it's spreading across the GOP.
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The disastrous choice American voters made in last year’s presidential election was put on grim display earlier this month in response to the politically motivated shooting of Minnesota state lawmakers and their spouses by a right-wing extremist named Vance Boelter.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz responded to the violence like a decent human being and condemned the shooting as an attack on all Americans and our very civic order.
“We are not a country that settles our differences at gunpoint,” a somber Walz said during a press conference. “We have demonstrated again and again in our state that it is possible to peacefully disagree, that our state is strengthened by civil public debate. We must stand united against all forms of violence — and I call on everyone to join me in that commitment.”
The president, meanwhile, responded to the shootings like — well, like a maniac.
Trump rejected Walz’s call for unity and as always refused to even pretend he’s supposed to be the president of the entire United States.
“I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out. I’m not calling him. Why would I call him?” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “The guy doesn’t have a clue. He’s a mess. So I could be nice and call him, but why waste time?”
Trump’s predecessors responded more humanely to gun violence. After the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, Republican president George W. Bush immediately reached out to Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine and offered his support and sympathy. Four years later, when 19 people, including Rep. Gabby Giffords, were shot in Tucson, Arizona, President Barack Obama offered Republican Gov. Jan Brewer — a vocal political opponent — the full resources of the federal government.
Unfortunately, 77 million Americans surrendered these moments of shared humanity when they put Trump back in the White House. The tragedies that once united us now only result in more division. And no one, including his supporters, should have expected anything else.
Owning the libs is everything
Most of the Republicans who might’ve distanced themselves from Trump’s repulsive behavior or dared to criticize him publicly, even if tepidly — such as Mitt Romney, Jeff Flake, or Paul Ryan — are no longer in office, and those who remain either find it easier to stay quiet or politically expedient to follow his shameful example.
Perhaps the worst offender was Utah Sen. Mike Lee. Barely a day had passed since the shooting when Lee tweeted two hateful, cruel messages, both of them featuring security camera photos of a mask-wearing Boelter just before he opened fire.
Lee’s first tweet inaccurately blamed Democrats for the assassination of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark: "This is what happens When Marxists don't get their way,” Lee wrote.
Lee’s second tweet was even more vile: he shared two images of the killer (who in fact is a staunch Trump supporter) with the caption, “Nightmare on Waltz street.” (Yes, Lee misspelled the governor’s name.)
Lee only deleted the posts after a personal intervention from Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith. It’s appalling that his grief-stricken Democratic colleagues couldn’t just focus on consoling their constituents after an unspeakable act of terror, but instead had to point out to Lee that he was acting like a lunatic.
Online trolling was not always Lee’s brand. Once described as a “relatively mainstream mainstream GOP figure,” Lee originally rose to prominence as a Tea Party social conservative, but in the Trump era, he amplifies Infowars content and promotes debunked conspiracy theories. Not so long ago, Lee’s posts would’ve been considered out of bounds even for shock jocks like Rush Limbaugh or Tucker Carlson. Now, it’s not just accepted behavior from a MAGA Republican, it’s expected.
MAGA cruelty has become the GOP’s defining policy. Indeed, the 54-year-old senator’s social media handle is “BasedMikeLee.” That’s not a reference to small government or some other sincerely held political belief. No, owning the libs is front and center.
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MAGA allows for no breathing room after a tragedy, no space for unity. Instead, Trumpists immediately try to use the corpses to score political points without regard for the facts. That’s what happened after Trump’s attempted assassination last year at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Although the shooter was reportedly a registered Republican, Trump and the GOP still blamed Democrats and the “radical left.” Worse, they actively sought to chill legitimate political criticism of Trump.
Mere hours after the shooting, JD Vance declared on social media that the “central premise of the Biden campaign” had directly led to Trump’s attempted assassination. The hypocrisy here was off the charts, considering that Trump himself had called President Joe Biden a “threat to democracy” and repeatedly said “this country is finished if we don’t win this election.”
Even when Democrats are targeted for violence, MAGA lacks the humility to confront its own hateful rhetoric. Republicans don’t resolve to “turn down the temperature” and treat even their political opponents like fellow Americans. Instead, they simply deny reality. Lee blames “Marxists” for the Minnesota shooting, and billionaire propagandist Elon Musk declared in a social media post, “The far left is murderously violent.”
Hours after the Minnesota shootings, Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno tweeted, “The degree to which the extreme left has become radical, violent, and intolerant is both stunning and terrifying.” Moreno was responding to an image of the shooter’s car, where “No Kings” fliers were found. The Republican senator didn’t pause to consider that the shooter — who had impersonated a police officer — might’ve also planned to infiltrate the protest. He immediately jumped to the conclusion that suited him. The post remains up.
During an interview with NewsNation a few days after the violence, Donald Trump Jr. insisted that the man who murdered Melissa and Mark Hortman and wounded state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife “seems to be a leftist” and “is a Democrat.”
This defies logic and reason. The police found a “hit list” of potential targets in the shooter’s car that included Walz himself, Rep. Ilhan Omar — a frequent target of MAGA dehumanization — Sen. Smith, and abortion rights supporters. Friends of the shooter describe him as a “strong” Trump supporter and “right-leaning politically.” In 2023, he delivered an anti-LGBTQ tirade that is eerily close to what many elected Republicans feel comfortable saying out loud these days: “There's people, especially in America, they don't know what sex they are. They don't know their sexual orientation. They're confused,” he said. “The enemy has gotten so far into their mind and their soul.”
Yet, even with all this information publicly available, Don Jr. told NewsNation the shooter was “a Minnesota politician, a guy who was appointed by the Democratic governor, vice presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, Tim Walz.” Right-wing YouTuber Benny Johnson also falsely referred to the shooter as a “left-wing Tim Walz appointee.”
The truth is that Boelter was appointed to a workforce development advisory board by former Gov. Mark Dayton in 2016. Walz reappointed him in 2019 but he never met Boelter and he didn’t work in Walz’s administration. Unlike Trump, Walz doesn’t go around purging Republicans from non-partisan positions, and it’s a sick irony this was twisted into a baseless conspiracy against him.
What’s most revealing about Don Jr.’s interview, aside from all the lies, is his insistence that political violence is “mostly caused” by Democrats (January 6 was apparently just a spirited potluck). This epitomizes the classic paradox of fascists finding enemies everywhere that are simultaneously weak and decadent but also an existential threat. Consider the prevailing MAGA narrative for Joe Biden — a senile incompetent but also a vindictive tyrant who persecuted his political opponents, actively encouraged political violence, and miraculously rigged elections against sitting presidents.
They can barely pretend
A familiar pattern has emerged where Trump will release an “official” statement after a tragedy that almost seems normal but is really just a prelude to his operatic grossness. For instance, he was praised for his anodyne social media post when Biden revealed in May that he had stage 4 prostate cancer. Yet, a week or so later, Trump let the mask slip while talking to reporters in the Oval Office.
“If you feel sorry for him, don't feel so sorry, because he's vicious,” Trump sneered. “What he did with his political opponent and all of the people that he hurt — he hurt a lot of people, Biden, so I really don't feel sorry for him.”
The pattern repeated after the Minnesota shooting. First, Trump released an “official” statement condemning the “horrific violence,” but days later, he unloaded on Gov. Walz.
The average elementary school teacher can usually spot when a student has copied someone else’s homework assignment, and the mainstream press should demonstrate similar skepticism about Trump’s “official” statements. The “real” Trump is the one who rambles in public and posts all-caps hate rants on social media.
When former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was brutally assaulted in his home by an unhinged MAGA supporter in 2022, Trump treated the attack like it was material for a standup comedy routine. That was also the “real” Trump on display. He even promoted deranged, debunked conspiracy theories about the attack.
Trump is fundamentally incapable of maintaining the pretense of statesmanlike grace in the wake of tragedy, and as the undisputed leader of the Republican Party, he doesn’t inspire anything better from his supporters. Notice that Lee adopted the familiar Trump pattern after Minnesota — his office released an “official” statement decrying the “senseless violence,” while “BasedMikeLee” let his freak flag fly on social media.
This behavior isn’t an outlier. MAGA thrives on the president’s brand of hateful politics. Trump is a small, petty man and as a result, the GOP becomes smaller and pettier every day.
That’s it for this week
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May Democrats and those who hate the genuinely hate-worthy MAGA movement never descend to the moral depths of Trump and his cheer squad.
Mike Lee is a moral shadow of his former self and one wonders what mechanisms were responsible. If only we could develop a vaccine for such maladies.