Over the weekend, Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman, her husband, and their family dog were murdered by a right-wing extremist impersonating a police officer. State Senator John Hoffman and his wife were also gunned down by the same lunatic, left critically injured. This wasn’t a policy dispute. This wasn’t a culture war metaphor. This was targeted political violence. A fucking slaughter. An act of domestic terror by a right-wing extremist on American soil.

And Senator Mike Lee, Utah’s great Mormon moral mouthpiece, responded not with grief, maturity, compassion, or decency but with memes.

Two separate tweets. Two smug captions. One of them read: “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” branding the shooter, a far-right extremist named Vance Boelter, as a leftist in an attempt to redirect blame and feed a base increasingly nourished on lies. The second caption, “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” is a grotesque horror-movie pun that mocks the tragedy and implicates Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, even as the bodies were still warm.

This isn’t dark humor. It’s moral rot.

Senator Lee’s responses are more than just tasteless. They are reckless, dishonest, and performatively cruel. There was a time in this country when elected officials, regardless of party, mourned publicly — when flags were lowered, condolences issued, silence observed. Now we get memes and misdirection from a small, bitter man who knows better — and chooses worse.

What makes this even more vile is that Lee brags about being a devout Mormon who loves to position himself as a moral authority, but is more than out of touch. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints explicitly teaches believers to “mourn with those that mourn” — it’s foundational to their faith. But apparently, somewhere between Sunday School and the Senate, Lee decided that shitposting and trolling grieving families was more important than living the values he claims to hold sacred.

What’s worse, he isn’t alone. His tweets are part of a well-oiled disinformation machine that weaponizes tragedy and pumps it into the bloodstream of the culture war. The goal isn’t healing — it’s division. Not truth, but traction. Not mourning, but monetization.

Imagine being a family member of Melissa Hortman. Your loved ones have been murdered, and while you’re drowning in grief, a United States Senator is turning your pain into a punchline. Imagine being a colleague of hers in the Minnesota legislature, seeing your peer’s violent death used as a prop in some twisted propaganda war. Imagine being anyone with basic human decency and watching a man with power and influence look at bloodshed and think: “This will kill on Twitter.”

There’s no scripture, no doctrine, no democratic tradition that sanctifies what he did. No verse says, “Blessed are the shitposters.”
No constitutional or legal principle requires us to tolerate this level of shamelessness from elected officials.

Senator Lee’s behavior is not just disgraceful. It’s disqualifying.
The inability of political leaders to distinguish between tragedy and opportunity, between grief and glee, and between leadership and trolling illustrates the degree to which the American experiment is not just in trouble; it’s in free fall.

There is still time to course-correct. To demand more. To vote with conscience rather than party loyalty. Do the people of Utah really want this deranged, morally bankrupt voice representing them in Washington? Do Mormons want this pathetic excuse for a man as the public face of their values? I have to believe they don’t. I have to believe we’re all better than this.

A beloved and respected public official and her husband were murdered in their home in cold blood. She was also a wife and mother. Their children lost both parents and their dog. Another state senator and his wife barely survived an assassination attempt. And while doctors were removing bullets from their bodies, Mike Lee was busy in Photoshop, crafting fucking memes.

It’s not just indecent. It’s a full-fledged moral crisis.