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GOP Senator Mike Lee's Horrible Remarks [1]

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Date: 2025-06-17

Republican Senator Mike Lee– He’s Now Aboard the GOP “Cuckoo” Extremist Train June 17, 2025

Just how low can you go? With the present GOP Trumpist cult that occupies the Congress, there is, apparently, no bottomost floor. On June 14, 2025, Minnesota Democratic lawmaker State Representative Melissa Hortman (55) and her husband Mark (58) were brutally shot and killed by a political assassin and State Senator John Hoffman and his wife were wounded, according to CBS News, but will survive. https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/melissa-hortman-killed-john-hoffman-political-shootings/

Barely 24 hours after these horrible attacks, Utah Republican U.S. Senator Mike Lee issued, as stated in the NY Times, two political messages mocking the attack. And these were his comments on X: “This is what happens When Marxists don’t get their way.” This message was accompanied, the Times noted, by photographs of the suspect. One hour later, in a second post showing the suspect, Mr. Lee wrote: “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” an obvious reference to the Gopher State’s Democratic Governor,Tim Walz. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/us/politics/mike-lee-minnesota-assassination-democrats.html

After huge outcries of condemnation for these postings, from both sides of the political aisle, Sen. Lee issued a very different message on his official Senate account, according to the Times, which hit the right somber notes condemning this political assassination and hoping for the Hoffmans’ recoveries. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/us/politics/mike-lee-minnesota-assassination-democrats.html

IMHO, the second comment, was too little and too late. After the statements Sen. Lee initially made, it is rather hard to take the second “revised” statements by Sen. Lee very seriously. Who is this Senator Lee?

Third-term Senator Mike Shumway Lee (54) is Utah’s senior U.S. Senator. He has a very distinguished legal and political background. A native of Mesa, Arizona, Mike Lee’s father was Rex Lee, President Reagan’s Solicitor General who represented the U.S. before the Supreme Court. Mike Lee’s older brother, Thomas Rex Lee, as noted in Wikipedia, was a former justice of the Utah Supreme Court. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lee

Mike Lee grew up in Provo, UT, where his father was the founding dean of Brigham Young University’s law school. As a boy, Lee also lived part-time in McLean, VA when his father worked in D.C. Lee returned to Provo and graduated from both Brigham Young University (BYU) and BYU Law School. As an undergraduate, Lee was elected president of the students’ association, while his father was president of BYU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lee

In law school, he was a member of the BYU Law Review, an honor usually reserved for top-ranking students. He received his law degree in 1997. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lee

He then clerked for two federal appellate judges, including conservative Sam Alito who later joined the Supreme Court. When Alito went to the High Court, Lee clerked for him again. https://almanacofamericanpolitics.com , National Journal, 2023, p. 1868. Lee is a second cousin to former GOP Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon and former Democratic Senators Mark Udall of Colorado andTom Udall of New Mexico. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lee

As a young adult, Lee also did a two-year stint as a Mormon missionary in the Texas Rio Grande Valley. https://www.lee.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/about-mike

Lee decided to challenge 18-year well-known UT GOP U.S. Senator Bob Bennett in 2009 because Bennett, a conservative, had voted for Obama’s bailout of the financial industry and had been a supporter of bipartisan health care reform along with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). Bennett, because of these stands, was opposed by UT Tea Party members, whom Lee worked with. In order to get on the UT primary ballot, incumbent Bennett had to win 60% of the delegate vote or finish first or second at the UT State GOP Convention. Bennett failed to get on the convention ballot and also lost the primary to Lee by two points. In “royal-Red” Utah, Lee clobbered his Democratic rival by nearly 29 points, winning his first election in 2010. At age 39, Lee was the youngest Senator when he took office. In 2016, he easily won a second term by an even bigger 41.09 margin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lee When he ran for a third term in 2022 against independent candidate Evan McMullin, a former CIA officer whom Democrats tacitly endorsed, Lee defeated McMullin by 14 points, 55%-41%. https://almanacofamericanpolitics.com , National Journal, 2023, p. 1870

Lee refused to endorse Donald in 2016 and voted, instead, for McMullin in the general election. Still, like many other GOPers, Sen. Lee soon allied himself with Donald. He endorsed Trump in the 2020 and 2024 elections. He additionally supported Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden. In the end, however, Lee voted to certify the 2020 presidential election results. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lee

In the U.S. Senate, the right-wing Club for Growth gave Lee a 100% score in 2011. The American Conservative Union (ACU) also gave him a perfect score for his 2011 voting record. The hard-right Heritage foundation gave him a 99% rating that tied him with prominent conservative former South Carolina GOP Senator Jim DeMint. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lee In 2021, the liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) gave him a zero rating and the ACU gave him that same year a 97% score. He “improved” his hard right record in 2022 when the ACU gave him a 100% rating. In 2021, labor’s AFL-CIO gave Lee a near basement 2021 13% score. https://almanacofamericanpolitics.com

According to the Almanac of American Politics, Lee was a strong foe of impeaching Donald in both of his impeachment trials. Lee worked with Trump’s lawyers, according to the Almanac, on Donald’s defense strategy in his first impeachment trial. In his second impeachment trial, when Trump was accused of inciting the fatal Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, although fellow Utah Senator Mitt Romney voted to convict Donald, Lee not only voted to acquit Trump, but, as stated in the Almanac, he was found to have been communicating with Trump chief-of-staff Mark Meadows and urging dubious legal strategies to challenge the election results including exploring ways to encourage state legislators to appoint alternate slates of electors. https://almanacofamericanpolitics.com , National Journal, 2023, pp. 1869-1870

Lee fought hard to put Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh and Lee were friends since Lee had clerked for Alito on the Supreme Ct. In the 2016 campaign, a conservative group had even put Lee’s name on a list of 25 potential SCOTUS (Supreme Ct. of the United States) nominees that it gave to Trump. https://almanacofamericanpolitics.com

And there is more. Lee was one of two Senators to vote against giving compensation to the first responder victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He called the Voting Rights Reform legislation “For the People Act,” one that was “rotten to the core” and was “as if written in Hell by the devil himself.” https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/542559-mike-lee-condemns-for-the-people-voting-bill-says-its-as-if-written-in/

In 2015, Sen. Lee condemned the Supreme Ct’s. decision in “Obergefell v. Hodges” which overturned same sex marriage bans as unconstitutional. On November 29, 2022 Lee voted “NAY” on the “Respect for Marriage Act” which requires the federal government to recognize the validity of same-sex and interracial marriages in the U.S. Lee’s Mormon Church had supported the legal guarantees of religious freedom found in this legislation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lee

Lee also was among 11 senators who voted against “Honoring our PACT Act of 2022.” That bill funded research and benefits for up to 3.5 million veterans exposed to toxic substances during their service. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2000/08/03/pact-act-11-senate-republicans-opposed/10223007002/ Based on this record, it is no surprise that the NY Times ranked Lee as the Senate’s most conservative member. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/25/us/politics/senate-votes-repeal-obamacare.html

You get the idea.

Senator Lee can keep getting re-elected easily in “Deep Red” Utah. However, his views will be irrelevant if Democrats can take back the Senate. We must come out in droves to attempt to do just that in Campaign 2026.

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