MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell condemned the staff of GOP Sen. Mike Lee for sticking with him after the Utah lawmaker tried to justify the alleged Minnesota gunman’s attack on Democratic lawmakers.
Days after Lee shared two X posts making light of the shooting—one that said alleged shooter Vance Boelter’s killing of state Rep. Melissa Hortman was “what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” and another that mocked the attack as “Nightmare on Waltz Street“—O’Donnell said on Monday’s The Last Word that Lee’s staff now “lives in disgrace” and must make a “moral choice.”
“If you remain on Mike Lee’s staff in the Senate and you find yourself down in the Dirksen cafeteria or walking the halls of the Russell Building, the Dirksen Building, or the Hart Senate Office Building or the Capitol, you should know that every other Senate staff member sees you as disgraced, sees you as wearing Mike Lee’s disgrace as your own, as long as you decide to continue to serve Mike Lee in the United States Senate,” O’Donnell said. “You have your own choice to make.”
Lee was roundly criticized for his posts, which attempted to turn the alleged gunman into a symbol of leftist violence despite his past registrations with the Republican Party and his apparent support for Donald Trump.
The alleged gunman also had a target list comprised of mostly Democratic officials and abortion providers, police said.
Democratic Sen. Tina Smith, a friend of Hortman, confronted Lee on the Senate floor on Monday over the posts.
“I wanted him to know how much pain that caused me,” Smith told reporters on Monday. “I needed him to hear from me directly what impact I think his cruel statement had on me, his colleague.”
Lee has not addressed the controversial posts, but O’Donnell urged his staff to make the “moral” decisions over whether to stand by him.
“If you agree with Mike Lee’s choice to make jokes about assassination of a Democratic officeholder in Minnesota, if you agree with that, then stay with Mike Lee, stick with Mike Lee, stick with him all the way,” he said. “But if you do have decency, you know you only have one choice.
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