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Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day: Mike Lee- 2023 Update [1]

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Date: 2023-08-07

In 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, as well as 2022, 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). He was confident enough that he would be victorious in his re-election effort in 2016 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).



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). Lee 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 also was openly discussing eliminating all public protected government lands as a policy of the United States in 2018 because apparently rejecting the Bears’ Ears Monument in Utah wasn’t enough for him. Even since that point, he has managed to have some real low lights:

Mike Lee was inexplicably re-elected to a third term in the Senate, surviving an Independent challenge from Evan McMullin, who hit him hard in debates about his seditious activities in and around Jan. 6th, 2021. And yet… Utah voters found that not an issue, and sent a man who offers them nothing, and wants to take away what little the government might do for them back to DC for six more years.



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’ve seen a lot of indictments to make us happy lately. More in the direction of people like Mike Lee would make us smile a little bit more.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/7/2185911/-Fanatical-Republican-Extremist-of-the-Day-Mike-Lee-2023-Update

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