Tina Smith, a Minnesota senator confronted Mike Lee, a Utah senator, on Monday to tell him directly that his social media posts fueled ongoing misinformation about a shooting that killed her friend.
Lee’s posts, which advanced conspiracies that a Minnesota assassin was a “Marxist” and blamed the state’s governor for Melissa Hortman’s death, were among many threads of false or speculative claims swirling online after the killings.
Smith told Lee his posts were “brutal and cruel,” according to CNN. “He should think about the implications of what he’s saying and doing. It just further fuels this hatred and misinformation,” she said. She wanted him to hear from her directly how painful it was to see his words after the brutality her state endured. Lee didn’t say much, according to Smith, and seemed surprised to be confronted.
Within hours of the shootings, rightwing social media accounts with millions of followers manufactured false conspiracy theories about the suspect and his motives, falsely portraying the man whose friends say he is an evangelical Christian Trump supporter as a radical leftwing assassin and attempting to paint him as a political ally of Tim Walz, the Democratic governor and former vice-presidential candidate.
It was the latest example of a rightwing media ecosystem that swiftly spins up narratives that serve their political agendas after tragic events, regardless of accuracy, and does not correct them after further information shows them to be untrue or incomplete. Elected officials like Lee and others often share in the rumoring, lending legitimacy to these claims.
Vance Luther Boelter, 57, was captured Sunday after he allegedly killed Hortman, a Democratic house speaker, and her husband, and wounded John Hoffman, a state senator, and his wife.
Collin Rugg, an engagement farmer on X, advanced a debunkable theory to his followers on X that Hortman was killed over healthcare policy for undocumented immigrants, implying the violence came from the left. He shared a video that ping-ponged around the rightwing internet of Hortman, emotional, describing a vote to repeal healthcare eligibility for undocumented adults.
Missing from the post was the context: Hortman supported this care, only voting for its repeal to pass a state budget deal in an evenly split state House. Hoffman, the state senator, had not voted to repeal the provision.
Rightwing social media personality Mike Cernovich, with 1.5 million followers, escalated the lie by suggesting Walz ordered the assassination. He hasn’t taken the post down and has continued to advance the claims, posting on Monday that “Democrats know they are now seen as the party of political violence so their propaganda agents are trying to shift the blame. It won’t work.”
Laura Loomer, the far-right conspiracy theorist and Trump whisperer, posted that “Walz’s goons are now assassinating lawmakers who support legislation Walz opposes” and called the Democratic party “a terrorist organization”. Loomer and others on the right also tried to tie Boelter to the “No Kings” protests against the Trump administration. Officials found rudimentary signs in the suspect’s vehicle that said “No Kings” an indication he knew of the event, not that he would attend it as a protester.
Elon Musk, a frequent poster of unverified rightwing claims, amplified the narrative to his 200 million followers, quote-tweeting claims that “the left” killed Hortman and saying “the far left is murderously violent”.
The lies ignore overwhelming evidence of Boelter’s actual politics: his roommate David Carlson told reporters Boelter voted for Trump and “was a strong supporter”. Other longtime friends told local media Boelter was right-leaning. While Minnesota voters don’t list party affiliation, he was registered as a Republican in Oklahoma in 2004.
Boelter’s own recorded sermons expose his extremist views. Preaching in Congo in 2023, he is recorded as saying: “The churches are so messed up, they don’t know abortion is wrong.” He ranted against LGBTQ people as “confused,” claiming “the enemy has gotten so far into their mind and their soul”. His alleged hit list included abortion providers and pro-choice advocates.
Influencers seized on Boelter’s appointment to a state board, branding him a “Walz appointee” to misleadingly suggest a personal relationship. In reality, Boelter was first appointed by Walz’s predecessor, who was a Democrat, in 2016 to a 60-member volunteer advisory board. Walz did however renew the appointment in 2019, considered a routine administrative decision for one of hundreds of such positions. Walz did not know Boelter.
“It was the equivalent of calling a Sunday school volunteer an ‘appointee of the bishop’,” a local reporter wrote.
Rightwing X user Viva Frei, with more than 700,000 followers, posted a thread casting doubt on Boelter being a Trump supporter. The account has continued to post about the shootings, attempting to tie Walz to Boelter and his wife, Jennifer. A different Jennifer Boelter interned in Walz’s congressional office, though Frei is not accepting that answer.
“Do you believe @GovTimWalz spokesperson when they claim that the Jennifer Boelter who interned for Tim Walz in 2010 is not the same Jennifer Boelter who is married to suspected assassin/domestic terrorist Vance Boelter?” the account asked in a poll.
On Monday, posts showing a man at a protest with a shirt with a gun that says “resist” falsely claimed the man was Boelter. “Yea Libs sorry. He’s one of you. Keep saying he’s not. No one believes you,” said one post that got more than 2m views. The actual man in the picture debunked it, saying he was at a No Kings rally in Texas in the photo, making clear it was not Boelter.
Local Republican officials have largely not contributed to the rumors, in some cases pushing back on the narratives.
Harry Niska, the Republican floor leader in the Minnesota House, said on X that he often has and will continue to criticize Walz’s policies and rhetoric. “But there is no responsible basis to attribute to him any of the evil acts committed by Vance Boelter,” he said.