Tina Smith confronts Mike Lee over posts about fatal shooting of Minnesota lawmaker
Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) on Monday confronted Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) over of series of comments he made blaming Democrats for the fatal shooting of a Minnesota state lawmaker.
Shortly after the Senate began its Monday evening vote, Smith was seen walking into a conference room where Republicans were about to hold a meeting to discuss the text the Finance Committee had just unveiled for the party's massive tax bill.
She emerged a minute later talking to Lee in an adjacent hallway. The two spoke for a couple of minutes before the Minnesota Democrat emerged.
"Let me gather myself," Smith said as she left, declining to comment initially.
She eventually told reporters she wanted Lee to hear from her directly "about how painful that was and how brutal that was to see that on what was just a horrible, brutal weekend."
"And I think too often in the Senate we talk to each other through one another and I wanted him to hear it from me directly," she said.
Smith said he was "hard for me to characterize exactly what he said. He didn't say a lot, frankly," but added that Lee "seemed a little surprised to be confronted."
Lee angered Democrats of all stripes when he pinned blame on their side of the aisle after Melissa Hortman, a Democrat and former Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, and her husband were killed over the weekend at their home. The same man accused in that shooting is suspected of shooting a second state lawmaker, state Sen. John Hoffman (D), and his wife at their home.
"This is what happens When Marxists don’t get their way,” Lee wrote Sunday on his personal account on the social platform X.
Shortly after, he commented, “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” referring to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), alongside a photo of the suspected shooter.
The two remarks were condemned by numerous Democrats. Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) called Lee’s remarks “beyond dangerous” and “absolutely unacceptable.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a friend of the late legislator, told MSNBC prior to returning to Washington that she also planned on talking to Lee and condemned his comments.
“What I’m going to tell him is: This isn’t funny," she said.