Tag: tim walz
Right-Wing Propaganda Spins Up Fake Profile Of Minnesota Assassin

Right-Wing Propaganda Spins Up Fake Profile Of Minnesota Assassin

In the early hours of June 14, Vance Boelter allegedly shot two Minnesota Democratic state lawmakers in their homes while impersonating law enforcement — Rep. Melissa Hortman and Sen. John Hoffman, along with their spouses. Hortman and her husband were killed, and Hoffman and his wife are recovering from their injuries. While the public waited for more information about the suspect and his motives, right-wing media began to speculate wildly about Boelter, spinning a false narrative that he was a leftist figure aligned with Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz.

The evidence for this theory is scarce: Conservative media suggested Boelter killed Hortman for breaking from the Democrats on a recent vote to give undocumented immigrants health care. Right-wing media also referenced the flyers from Saturday’s “No Kings” protest that were found in the suspect’s vehicle and pointed to the fact that Boelter was appointed by Walz to a bipartisan working group in 2019, with one figure saying that “he was friends with Walz” and another claiming the governor is “directly connected to a domestic terrorist.” Some even speculated that Walz put a “political hit” out on the lawmakers in retaliation for their vote — even as reports surfaced that the governor himself was on a list of targets found in the suspect’s vehicle — and demanded that someone “investigate.” The narrative snowballed over the weekend, culminating in a sick post from Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), which suggested that the shooter was a “Marxist.”

As more information surfaced, a very different picture emerged: The suspect left behind a “hit list” of 70 targets, including abortion providers and other Minnesota Democrats. Walz, U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, Rep. Ilhan Omar, and state Attorney General Keith Ellison were all on the list. The suspect’s friend described him as a supporter of Trump who enjoyed watching Alex Jones’ Infowars and said that Boelter “would be offended if anyone called him a Democrat.” Wiredreported that Boelter is linked to evangelical ministries and is “president of Revoformation Ministries.” The report also said that the suspect has preached against abortion and the LGBTQ community. Additionally, he “liked” the right-wing legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom on Facebook.

    By the time the actual facts emerged, the right’s reckless and conspiratorial speculation had done its job, muddying the waters with misinformation claiming the shooter was a left-wing associate of Walz, which quickly spread across social media.

    • Alec Lace of The Alec Lace Show drew the connection to Hortman’s vote on undocumented immigrants in a 12:10 p.m. ET tweet on Saturday. “Melissa Hortman sounded fearful after voting to repeal healthcare for illegal aliens. Almost as if she knew that her base would become unhinged. She and her husband were tragically shot and killed. A targeted attack, per Gov. Walz. Was her vote the motive?” [Twitter/X, 6/14/25]
    • At 12:50 p.m. ET on Saturday, TheBlaze’s Julio Rosas posted that the shooter was “appointed to the Governor’s Workforce Development Board in 2019 by Gov. Tim Walz.” He wrote:“BREAKING: I'm told by a police source in Minnesota the suspect in the shootings of MN state lawmakers is Vance Luther Boelter. It appears it is the same Boelter who was appointed to the Governor’s Workforce Development Board in 2019 by Gov. Tim Walz. He appointed to the Governor's Workforce Development Council in 2016 by then-Gov. Mark Dayton.” [Twitter/X, 6/14/25]
    • Trump ally Laura Loomer called for Walz to be “detained by the FBI and interrogated.” She wrote, “The media wants to gaslight you into thinking the shooter in Minnesota is a Trump supporter. He was appointed by Walz. He was friends with Walz. And he had NO KINGS flyers in his car. No Kings is a violent group and it’s no surprise the shooting took place the day the NO KINGS protests kicked off across the country. The organizers of NO KINGS and @GovTimWalz need to be detained by the FBI and interrogated.” [Twitter/X, 6/14/25]
    • Right-wing commentator Nick Sortor posted that the shooter goes “WAY back” with Walz and that their connections must be investigated. He wrote: “WTF? It seems ass*ssin Vance Boulter’s wife, Jenny, ALSO worked for Tim Walz. She worked for him in Washington, DC in the early 2010s while he was a Congressman. Their connections to Walz go WAY back! Must investigate!” [Twitter/X, 6/14/25]
    • Conservative personality Dinesh D’Souza posted about the “No Kings” flyers. Along with an image of the flyers, he wrote: “This photo is from inside the vehicle of the suspect in the targeted killing of two Democratic officials who were opposed to the Left’s free health care for illegals scheme.” [Twitter/X, 6/14/25]
    • Right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson questioned whether the shooting is a “massive false flag.” He added that “nothing seems to make sense” and that what happened is “very strange and very dark and very evil.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 6/16/25]
    • Right-wing troll Mike Cernovich claimed that Walz is a “terrorist” and asked if he “activate[d] an assassin against a political rival. He wrote, “Did Tim Walz activate an assassin against a political rival who voted against him plan to give illegal immigrants free healthcare?” Cernovich called Walz a “terrorist” and said that he is “directly connected to a domestic terrorist, that is confirmed, the only question is whether Tim Walz himself ordered the political hit against a rival who voted against Walz’s plan to give free healthcare to illegals.” [Twitter/X, 6/14/25, 6/14/25, 6/14/25]
    • Infowars’ Alex Jones said that the shooting “has got the signs of setup all over it,” suggesting Boelter will be found dead. He continued to suggest that the shooting was a “false flag.” Jones said he would be “very surprised if they catch him in the manhunt now. No, he’s dead in a barn somewhere.” (Boelter was caught and charged Sunday night.) [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 6/15/25; Minnesota Star Tribune, 6/16/25]
    • Jones also said, “The commies are planning their uprising.” [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 6/15/25]
    • A user on X received 53 million views on a post that claimed that “the left has become a full blown domestic terrorist organization.” TheBlaze columnist Auron MacIntyre replied, adding that “until the GOP is ready to go after the left the way the Democrats go after the right, progressive terrorists will continue to kill Americas.” [Twitter/X, 6/14/25, 6/14/25]
    • The New York Post further fanned the flames with the headline “Former appointee of Tim Walz sought in ‘politically motivated assassination’ of lawmaker and husband in creepy mask.” Rupert Murdoch’s outlet also wrote that “officials were mum on the motives — though it came just five days after Hortman sided with Republican leaders as the lone Democrat to cut access to state health benefits for illegal immigrants in the North Star State.” [New York Post, 6/14/25]
    • Trump ally Charlie Kirk blamed “No Kings” protests for the “violent political radicalization.” He wrote:“Tim Walz has reportedly backed out, but he was slated to headline the Twin Cities No Kings ‘protest’ today. Total shocker that smearing a duly-elected president who won an overwhelming electoral mandate as a fascist or a king leads to violent political radicalization.” [Twitter/X, 6/14/25]
    • Rumble host Viva Frei falsely claimed that the shooter’s wife, Jenny, interned for Walz and called the shooter a “longtime associate of Tim Walz.” In reality, a Walz spokesperson said the Jennifer Boelter who interned for Walz is a different person entirely.[Twitter/X, 6/14/25; Minnesota Star Tribune, 6/15/25]
    • X user Rod D. Martin claimed without evidence: “BREAKING: Tim Walz deletes all posts mentioning Vance Boelter.” The post earned over 700,000 views. [Twitter/X, 6/15/25]
    • On Newsmax, host Lidia Curanaj framed the story as “violence we are seeing from the left” and called the shooter a “Democrat.” She claimed that people said, “his must be some right-wing extremism. Then we come to find out this is a Tim Walz appointee. This is a Democrat. Talk to me about that, about the violence that we are seeing from the left.” Her guest, podcaster Stuart Kaplan, said that “Democrats are failing to really come out and condemn and attempt to try to quell the violence that clearly has been percolating for some period of time.” Curanaj also brought up that Hortman “voted against health care for illegal aliens” before pivoting to “the media’s role in this.” Kaplan said there is “too much of a division with respect to what is truth and then what we have been selling as fiction” and that “it is becoming more and more irresponsible to kind of fan these flames.” [Newsmax, Sunday Agenda, 6/15/25]
    • On Fox & Friends Weekend, guest host Charles Hurt pointed out that Hortman “had voted against a priority of many Democrats.” His guest, Paul Mauro, called the shooter’s political background “murky” and claimed that the shooter’s wife “was apparently an intern for Tim Walz.” Hurt also brought up the “No Kings” flyers and the hit list, though he failed to specify the targets of the hit list. [Fox News, Fox & Friends Weekend, 6/15/25]
    • Far-right conspiracy theorist Ann Vandersteel posted: “The man who just assassinated Democrat Rep. Melissa Hortman is also HIMSELF A DEMOCRAT.” She added, “So to be clear: Vance Luther Boelter was absolutely NOT MAGA. We all need to make that clear before the lying ALPHABET MEDIA starts their anti-Trump spin.” [Twitter/X, 6/14/25; Media Matters, 7/26/24]
    • QAnon conspiracy theorist Jacob Creech, who goes by “Clandestine” on social media, claimed that the shooter is a “crazy Democrat.” He added, “This is the product of the endless violent rhetoric from the Dems/MSM. The Dems/MSM are terrorists.” [Twitter/X, 6/14/25; CBC, 4/10/22]
    • QAnon conspiracy theorist Pepe Deluxe posted: “The victims voted against insurance for illegals. Probably a coincidence.” [Twitter/X, 6/14/25; Media Matters, 10/29/24]
    • Far-right streamer Woke Societies posted: “Remember that study that came out that the Left is adopting assassination culture more and more per year? Welp, it’s playing out right before our eyes.” [Twitter/X, 6/14/25]

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

    Kamala Harris

    For Democrats, There Can Be No More Playing Nice Guy

    Let me tell you how badly wrong I was about the presidential race back on August 6. It was the day that Kamala Harris picked Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate. Putting Walz on the ticket as the Democrats’ choice to be Vice President didn’t raise any problems. He ticked off a whole list of boxes – he’d been a teacher and a football coach; he came from the middle of the country; he was not too far to the left for centrists or too close to the center for progressives; he was amiable and folksy and thought to be a good contrast up against Mr. Yalie Double-speak, J.D. Vance.

    To make the formal introduction of Walz, the Harris campaign held a rally in a key city of a key state, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Democrats needed to carry Pennsylvania if they were to win in November, so it was a smart move. Tracy and I watched the rally. We were excited by the Walz pick and by the contrast between the Democrats’ joyful celebration and the typical “grim” Trump rally, as I described it.

    After watching the rally, I sat down and wrote a column I titled, “The political power of the smile.” I celebrated the “enthusiasm and delight” on display in Philadelphia that night. “Kamala Harris and Tim Walz reminded Democrats who they are,” I wrote rapturously. “Empathy is energy. Humor is energy. Dedication to freedom and justice is energy. Being willing to fight for what you believe is energy.”

    All of that is true, as far as it went. But what I failed to see then was that Democrats had followed their choice of a nice guy in 2020 with another choice of someone nice to run as their candidate this year. Kamala Harris’ smile, on display everywhere she went, was genuine. So was Tim Walz’s jolly demeanor.

    But voters didn’t want someone nice to take command of an economy and a country they saw as failing them. What was the right-track/wrong-track polling figure for this presidential race? Exit polls on election day revealed that about 70 percent of voters thought that the country was “on the wrong track.” Two-thirds felt the same way in September polls. People don’t care how nice you are when they’re hurting. They wanted someone who had an attitude that was as sour as they were feeling, and they went for him on election day.

    If they want to win, Democrats have nominated their last nice guy candidate for president. Donald Trump went out there on the stump and spent months calling Democrats “enemies,” “evil,” “dangerous,” “radical leftists,” “communists,” “Marxists,” “the enemy within.” He did it over and over and over. Kamala Harris called Trump “increasingly unstable and unhinged,” and told voters that “A second Trump term is a huge risk for America.”

    That’s about the worst she came up with. I’m not saying Harris should have matched Trump like a couple of kindergartners on the playground calling each other names and saying “I’m rubber and you’re glue.” But if you stand there and let your opponent call you ridiculous shit like “communist” and “Marxist” without at least pointing out how desperate it sounds, you’re just letting him embed those words in the minds of voters using sheer repetition.

    During the debate, instead of turning toward Trump and calling him a liar to his face every time he opened his mouth and a lie came out, Harris relied on the tried and true Democratic tactic of countering his lies with rational argument. When Trump said he wouldn’t sign a national abortion ban, instead of laughing in his face and turning to the camera and telling the audience they had just heard the man who appointed the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade tell the fifty-seven thousandth and possibly biggest and worst lie of his career, Harris listed some examples of disastrous outcomes women had faced when seeking care for troubled pregnancies in states with abortion bans. When Trump said Democrats support “execution” of babies after they are born, instead of calling Trump a damn liar, Harris waited for one of the moderators to correct him with the statement, “there is no state in which it’s legal to kill a baby after it’s born.”

    I sat there watching that debate and kept asking out loud, “why doesn’t she call him a liar?” as she missed opportunity after opportunity to call out his lies. I kept waiting for her to say something like, “That’s just bullshit, Donald. Stop insulting the American people.” I waited in vain.

    I don’t care who the Republicans nominate for president next time, we can’t have a Democrat up there who isn’t willing to stand up and tell people “he’s full of shit” every time the Republican says something that is full of shit.

    And while I’m at it, no Democrat should ever again counter some line of racist or xenophobic or sexist cant from a Republican with the lame denial, “that is not who we are.” You don’t respond to racist garbage with a denial. You respond by calling out the racism and asking them, “is that what you teach your children?” Democrats should deploy shame as a political tactic far more than they have for the last dozen years. It works, especially when it’s repeated again and again.

    I’m not trying to do an autopsy on the Harris campaign, and I’m not saying that she should have tried to “out-Trump” Donald Trump. Let Republicans do that to each other the next time they have a primary. But Democrats need to convince people that we get how they’re feeling and why. People need to know that we are aware of the problems that they face in their lives, and that we can deal with them. People don’t want to know about plans. Publishing “white papers” with lists of policies doesn’t do it. Telling people that you have a “plan” that’s going to solve this or that problem is a dead end. They’ve heard too many plans.

    Trying to tell people that inflation is down, even when it is down, when they can’t afford their rent or are paying more for gas to get to work than they are for lunch is an insult to their intelligence. Citing all the figures in the world that show reduced crossings of immigrants at the border doesn’t work. Even though it was true, telling people that immigrants pay taxes and contribute to the economy and that immigrants are not taking their jobs didn’t mean anything, because voters weren’t concerned with numbers, they were responding to the boogey-man word “immigrant,” not to facts.

    And whatever Democrats do from now on, don’t try to find a solution to any problem in the United States Congress, unless by some miracle, you get control of both houses. Republicans learned from the masters, Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell, that it’s hard as hell to get anything done with legislation, but the easiest thing in the world is stopping the opposing party from enjoying the tiniest victory.

    Gingrich and McConnell were fucking obstructionist assholes, but we know their names, don’t we? Is it too much to ask for Democrats to have a few obstructionist assholes in our arsenal of political talent? Gingrich used to be called a “bomb-thrower.” Where the fuck are our bomb-throwers?

    My old friend Joe Klein wrote a column a few days ago he called "On Strength." It’s nominally about the idea that Biden’s pardon of his son was, if you’ll pardon the expression, unpardonable. Klein says he’s known Biden for 37 years and always found him to be “a really good politician, which is high praise in my book.” Klein follows that rather faint praise with, “Biden was the sort of quarterback that football players call a ‘game manager’ as opposed to a game-changer. He was reliable. He wasn’t dynamic. He certainly wasn’t charismatic.”

    Klein goes on to say that he doesn’t think Kamala could have won the election, even “with a full running start because we are talking about the passive, sensitive, recumbent DNA of the Democratic Party here,” as opposed to “its exact opposite, a lucky con-man, who raised his fist above his blood-spattered face with the American flag flapping in the background on a sunny summer day in Pennsylvania—if an image can win an election, that may have been it.”

    What Klein says about Biden between the lines is that he has always been a nice guy, a kind of perfect exemplar of the nice political party into which he was born and that rewarded his decades of loyalty with a presidency for which he was too nice and too late.

    Politics ain’t paintball, a game where somebody gets hit by an exploding glob of paint and there’s a blue stain on their shirt and they’re out of the game. After eight long, miserable years of Donald Trump, the game doesn’t even have any rules anymore. If we haven’t learned by now that this Republican Party plays for keeps, it’s on us, not them, because they’ve been out in the open about it at least since Donald Trump arrived and started shooting people in the middle of Fifth Avenue and asking, “What are you going to do about it?”

    That’s the question for Democrats, isn’t it? What are we going to do to beat this gang of authoritarian thugs who want to shred the Constitution and put tanks and soldiers in our streets? As the old saying goes, nice guys finish last, and we’re at the stage in our history where finishing last means the last of our democratic way of life.

    Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

    Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter.


    Charlie Kirk

    The Grift That May Cost Trump The Election

    If Kamala Harris and Tim Walz win the White House on November 5, the Democrats may owe their triumph to the notorious character flaw that plagues the Republican Party of Donald Trump: an irresistible urge to grift.

    In an election likely to be determined by a very narrow proportion of votes in a few states, the difference between winning and losing could very well depend on what politicians have long referred to by the initials "GOTV" — getting out the vote — a process that involves calling people at home, knocking on their doors, letting them know how and where to vote, and perhaps even providing transportation to the polling place. It is a complex, demanding and essential campaign function that requires literally tens of millions of individual interactions to be orchestrated with exceptional attention to detail. To perform those tasks poorly (or not at all) can transform incipient victory into certain defeat.

    It is also a potentially expensive element of a national election, even when most of the job is undertaken by volunteers. That's where the opportunities for grifting arose in this cycle, after members of the Trump gang realized his campaign's field operations would attract big money from wealthy supporters. And at the forefront of the would-be chiselers in the 2024 campaign was Charlie Kirk, the aging leader of the MAGA movement's youth organization, Turning Point USA. (Kirk's personally profitable stewardship of Turning Point is examined in my new book, The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.)

    While the "ground game" for a Republican presidential ticket has been traditionally overseen by the Republican National Committee, Kirk used his close connections with the Trump family, especially Don Jr., to seize effective control of the party apparatus. (No doubt the president's eldest son was grateful to Turning Point for bulk buying copies of his book "Triggered.") He succeeded in pushing out RNC chair Ronna McDaniel and promoting his Turning Point PAC as the Trump campaign's principal field operation. He also persuaded Trump to install daughter-in-law Lara Trump, with no discernible credentials, as RNC chair so she could fire the competent RNC staff -- and advance his fortunes. He announced he would raise $108 million to "chase every vote" in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin.

    The wholesale abandonment of McDaniel's extensive election planning provoked deep skepticism among veteran GOP operatives. They saw no reason why Kirk would need so much cash to get out the vote in three states — or why anyone should invest in his dubious project. They noted that Turning Point's previous election organizing efforts in Arizona's elections in 2022 had not ended well: Every Republican running statewide that year lost.

    But Turning Point's lousy midterm results didn't discourage Trump, who was drawn to Kirk's emphasis on turning out "low-propensity" far-right MAGA base voters, rather than seeking to persuade the unaffiliated or undecided. That strategy has lately devolved into a crusade for the support of alienated young men, who may or may not actually show up at the polls. How Kirk plans to motivate them is unclear.

    Not long after McDaniel's ouster, Kirk and his allies began to pressure state and local Republican officials to shift their voter outreach and canvassing programs onto a new platform — an app marketed by Superfeed Technologies, a private firm that happens to be owned by Tyler Bowyer, Turning Point USA's chief operating officer. Just to keep it all in the family, Kirk's mother-in-law sits on the Superfeed board of directors.

    Now perhaps this web of conflict and profit is all perfectly legitimate. And maybe the Superfeed app and Kirk's ambitious vote-herding plan will prove to be a brilliant success. But election experts told the Associated Press in early October that they doubt Turning Point can mobilize enough new or infrequent Trump voters to affect the outcome. They pointed out that record numbers of voters cast ballots in 2016 and 2020, which doesn't leave a large share of likely voters to be organized.

    Another sign of weakness is that Turning Point has turned over its outreach campaign in Michigan, which reportedly collapsed, to Elon Musk's America PAC. The Musk effort has suffered from its own widely mocked technical glitches and flaws — including a scam that allowed its employees to falsify their canvassing records.

    Contrast all that sleaze with the Harris-Walz campaign, bolstered by tens or even hundreds of thousands of unpaid volunteers. They are motivated not by love of money but love of country.

    We don't know which side will win yet — but we already know who deserves to win.

    Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

    Reprinted with permission from Creators.

    Searing New Harris Ad Shows Horror Of Abortion Bans Close Up

    Searing New Harris Ad Shows Horror Of Abortion Bans Close Up

    The Harris-Walz campaign released a new ad on Wednesday featuring the story of a Texas woman who was denied access to an abortion under that state’s abortion ban—and almost died as a result.

    In the ad, Ondrea and her husband explain that at 16 weeks of pregnancy, her water broke and doctors informed them that their much-wanted baby would not survive. This happened in 2022, after the conservative majority on the Supreme Court overturnedRoe v. Wade, triggering Texas’ abortion ban.

    Three of the six justices who formed the court majority were appointed by Donald Trump, and all six were appointed by Republican presidents. Trump has praised the justices for the “genius” of their decision.

    The state’s ban would not allow Ondrea to have an abortion, and she later developed a septic infection that led to a six-hour emergency surgery. That resulted in a massive incision from her breast to her pelvis; she had to stay in the hospital for three weeks because the wound would not close. The couple allowed photos of the wound and footage of Ondrea’s scar to be shown in the ad.

    The ad juxtaposes the couple’s ordeal with audio of Trump bragging, “I am the one that got rid of Roe v. Wade.” Trump’s voice arguing in 2016 that “there has to be some sort of punishment” for an abortion also plays over footage of the thick scar bisecting Ondrea’s torso.

    In a longer video released by the campaign, Ondrea places the blame for her trauma squarely on Trump.

    “[Trump] did this to me. It almost cost me my life and it will affect me for the rest of my life,” she says. Her husband Ceasar adds, “Now we may never ever be able to get pregnant again.”

    The Harris-Walz campaign said that it would also release a shorter version of the ad to be used in digital advertising targeting men in order to highlight the impact that abortion bans are having on them as well.

    Reproductive freedom has been a central focus of Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid. Her campaign has released several ads focusing on Trump’s defense of his actions and the fallout for people dealing with the consequences.

    Harris supports the restoration of abortion rights and has advocated for federal legislation that will restore the protections of Roe v. Wade.

    Harris will be visiting Houston, Texas, on Friday for a campaign rally alongside Democratic Senate candidate Colin Allred. A House member, civil rights lawyer, and former NFL player, Allred has made abortion access a major part of his push to unseat GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, a longtime opponent of abortion rights.

    Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

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