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Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day: Mike Lee- 2022 Update [1]

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Date: 2022-08-07

For the eighth time, we're profiling Utah Senator Mike Lee, who could be in jeopardy of being indicted for seditious conspiracy due to his part in the fake electors scheme phase of Donald Trump's coup attempt.

In 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, as well as 2021, that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” published profiles of the U.S. Senator from Utah, Mike Lee. Our quick take on Mike Lee is that every policy he doesn’t like (The Affordable Care Act, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Violence Against Women Act (!), child labor laws (!), FEMA, disaster relief (!), the Food and Drug Administration, the 14th Amendment, the 17th Amendment… etc.) he has the nasty habit declaring unconstitutional (which is the job of the Supreme Court, not a senator). Sen. Lee is also one of Sen. Ted Cruz’s few allies in the Senate and was one of the most recognizable faces seen during the 2013 Shutdown, including at the rally the weekend before it ended at the World War II memorial where a pastor demanded that President Obama “put down his Quran and come out with his hands up”, before Tea Party “patriots” started grabbing barricades to throw in front of the gates of the White House while some waved Confederate flags. Y’know… nice, healthy rhetoric worthy of the movement.



Our 2015 update on Mike Lee featured his joining the ranks of the #47 Traitors and signing his name onto a letter to the leaders of Iran meant to sabotage negotiations the Obama administration was having with Iran, his belief that the Supreme Court actually does not have the power to overturn same-sex marriage, and the fact that he submitted federal “religious freedom” law legislation to attempt to allow the legal discrimination of LGBTQ citizens based on someone’s “deeply held religious faith” (the bill went absolutely nowhere).



In 2016, Mike Lee defended his U.S. Senate seat against Misty Snow, the first transgendered candidate for Senate in U.S. history, and in a state as red as Utah, he not surprisingly easily won re-election to a second term in office. He was confident enough that he would be victorious that he spent far more time helping his pal Ted Cruz campaign for president, and not just remaining on the fence about Donald Trump as a prospective nominee the whole time, but calling on him to step down as their nominee in October of 2016 (presumably so Ted Cruz could take his place as the nominee).



Fast forward a couple months, though, and as an investigation was just beginning by the United States’ intelligence community into the Trump campaign and Russia potentially colluding to change the outcome of the American election, and Mike Lee was quick to declare that “I don’t see any evidence of anything happening here, so as a result, I think it’s time to move forward. It’s time to wrap this thing up and it’s time to move on.”



With the amount of revelations spinning out about Trump/Russia, Mike Lee could not keep his finger in the dyke forever. As of mid-July 2018, he was talking about how Donald Trump needed to “step down” to salvage any kind of legacy. And that was BEFORE Trump’s humiliation by Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, but slightly after Trump passed over Mike Lee and his brother Thomas, a Utah Supreme Court Justice for the U.S. Supreme Court, and instead chose Brett Kavanaugh (likely because Kavanaugh thinks presidents should be above the law). He has continued to carry water for Trump regarding the Mueller investigation, complaining not only about Democrats reading it and wanting to protect future elections, but literally booking himself on The View to whine about it and claim he didn’t see evidence of a crime. Which is amazing because Mueller literally spells out ten different ways Trump committed obstruction of justice during the FBI’s investigation. It’s like he didn’t read the report, y’know?



Mike Lee has been further proof that the GOP can be their own worst enemies. Senate Republicans have been unable to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act during the Trump administration, even though they had a 52 seat majority. They’re stuck, though, because they have about three or four Senators with too much of a conscience, and a small cabal of complete ideological lunatics who aren’t satisfied with a partial repeal, they want socialized medicine completely burned to the ground, and salt poured on its ashes so nothing can ever grow there again. And Sen. Lee is one of that latter group.



Don’t think for a moment, though, that Mike Lee is ever coming to the center, because in 2018, he was openly discussing eliminating all public protected government lands as a policy of the United States, because apparently rejecting the Bears’ Ears Monument in Utah wasn’t enough for him.

Mike Lee’s allegiances to Donald Trump have led a faction of Utah Republicans seeking to restore their party to its former self in 2022 to run two primary challengers against Sen. Lee in the GOP Primary. When we mentioned that fact in our post one year ago, we said, “If there’s any hope for the Republican Party, it will be that an incompetent, boot-licking putz like Mike Lee does not get a third term in the Senate.” There’s clearly not hope for the Republican Party, because he easily won the GOP Primary with 62% of the vote.

The only way Senator Mike Lee is going to be taken out of office, it seems, is if he’s convicted of seditious conspiracy, and considering in the build-up to January 6th, he was exchanging texts with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows including one on December 8th, 2020 about creating a slate of “fake electors”… that is going to be something Merrick Garland and the Dept. of Justice might take a look at. Also something that should be added into the evidence log? Only a few weeks prior to that, he straight up declared “America is not a democracy” on social media.

We’re going to question the judgment of the state of Utah if they send someone who straight up endorses authoritarianism, interprets the Constitution as he sees fit to set up his party as the only one in control, and took part in a conspiracy to stop the peaceful transfer of power post-election to a third term in the Senate. Think about that, after twelve years, they think Mike Lee, who’s demonstratably a useless kook, might deserve another six on the job. At some point, you have to believe there’s a better option, and Lee sets the bar so, so low.



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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/7/2115054/-Fanatical-Republican-Extremist-of-the-Day-Mike-Lee-2022-Update

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