Tina Smith on confronting colleague over his posts: ‘Joking about an assassin killing people is beyond the pale’

Democrat tells Republican Mike Lee that his comments on assassination of Melissa Hortman spread misinformation and caused pain to thousands of Minnesotans

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he Minnesota senator Tina Smith said she was so “appalled” by her colleague Mike Lee’s social media posts spreading misinformation about the assassination of state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband on Saturday that “I felt that he needed to hear directly from me.”

The Democratic senator told the Guardian that she lost a friend and colleague this weekend when a shooter killed Hortman and her husband, Mark. Lee, a Republican senator from Utah, posted erroneously that the assassin was a “Marxist” and blamed the state’s governor for the killings. Although he deleted the posts on Tuesday, he has not apologized.

Lee needed to know he had disrespected not only Hortman, but all those who grieved her, Smith said. Rather than take it up with him online and get into a back-and-forth social media spat, she told him to his face.