GOP Senator Mike Lee Faces Backlash for Charlie Kirk Assassination Response

Utah republican senator Mike Lee was criticized for his clearly different responses to the assassinations of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Wednesday, and the former president of the Minnesota Chamber, Melissa Hortman, in June.

In the hours following the murder of Kirk on the campus of the University of Utah Valley, Lee passionate tribute, calling the incident “an act of cowardly violence” and welcoming Kirk as an “American patriot” who inspired “countless young people”. Lee added on X: “The terrorists will not win. Charlie Will. Please join me to pray for his wife Erika and their children. Let justice be fast.”

However, less than three months earlier, Lee’s response to the double assassination of the Democratic legislator Hortman and her husband was widely criticized. Instead of crying the victims, Lee initially mocked the event on social networks.

Nowsweek contacted Lee’s office to comment by e-mail.

Why it matters

The disparate reactions of an acting American senator underline to what extent the responses to political violence can diverge on the basis of the affiliation of victims’ parties. Critics argue that Lee’s response to Hortman’s massacres – promotes disinformation and making partisan jabs – under -tension of attempts to build a bipartite consensus against political violence.

What to know

Kirk, 31, the founder of the right -wing youth organization Turning Point USA and a long -standing ally of President Donald Trump, delivered a speech in a tent to a large crowd on the University of Utah Valley campus in Orem, when one shot struck him in the neck. He collapsed, was transported urgently to a local hospital where he was declared dead.

The shooter wore dark clothes and pulled a building roof at a certain distance to the courtyard where the event at which Kirk spoke took place. Authorities said there was no evidence that someone else was involved in the attack.

On June 14, 2025, Hortman and her husband, Mark, was fatally killed at their home in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, in what the police and the Democratic Governor Tim Walz described as a politically motivated assassination. The suspect, Vance Luther Boelter, would have disguised himself as a police officer, wearing a bullet-proof vest and leading a vehicle that seemed to be the application of the law. Boelter also shot the state senator John Hoffman and his wife in a related attack. They both survived.

Lee offered a prayer message after Wednesday’s shooting and condolences to Kirk’s women and children while calling for rapid justice.

But the Republican took a much less graceful tone in June, including an article on X which said: “Nightmare on Waltz Street”, a jab referring to Walz. Another position wrongly said: “This is what happens when the Marxists do not reach their own way”, while including an image of Boelter, which has friends and public archives described as politically on the right, having registered as a republican in Oklahoma.

Lee deleted his mocking posts only after having faced a backlash.

The Democratic Senator of the United States of Minnesota, Tina Smith, personally confronted Lee two days after his articles on Hortman shots. She told CNN that Lee’s behavior was “brutal and cruel” and said publicly: “He should think about the implications of what he says and does.”

Now these messages are the subject of a renewed criticism.

“When the MINNESOTA House speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered, Senator Mike Lee made fun of their online murders,” said author Shannon Watts on X, in response to one of Lee’s tributes to Kirk.

Another X user wrote that Lee “has shown no respect for people murdered in MN, in fact, he kicked their murders. This is a bad person.”

“F *** You Mike Lee. You are a piece of disgusting excrement”, read a frank response on the same social media platform.

Maga eminent personalities responded to Kirk’s assassination with combative and incendiary rhetoric, supervising murder as a politically motivated attack and launching it as a call to retaliate.

Elon Musk saw it as an attack linked to “the left” and freedom of expression. “If they will not leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die,” he said.

Trump published an oval video tribute from the office, describing Kirk’s death a “dark moment” and blamed the radical “radical rhetoric. The far -right activist, Laura Loomer, also blamed the” lunatic leftists “.

“We have to close these lunatic leftists. Once for all. The left is a threat of national security,” she wrote on X.

Infowars host Alex Jones degenerated rhetoric, supervising the assassination as an appeal to “war”, while the influencer and the self -proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tate called for “civil war”.

The motive of the shooter and the political ideology remain unknown.

In the midst of the reaction, some called at the end of the political division and violence, notably the Republican Governor of Utah, Spencer Cox.

“Our nation is broken,” he said, arguing that “we will all try to find a way to stop hating our American compatriots”.

Kirk himself was a polarizing figure known for awareness and alignment with Trump. He took online positions on firearms, one saying: “It is worth having a cost, unfortunately, deaths by firearm each year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other rights given by God. It is a prudent case.”

He also urged armed public transport in certain states, and has promoted theories of conspiracy and misleading allegations on COVVI-19 vaccines and mandates.

What happens next

The federal, state and local authorities were still looking for an unidentified shooter early Thursday and worked what they called “several active crime scenes”.