The damage has been done: MAGA spreads misinformation after Minnesota shootings

This is an adapted excerpt from the June 17 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”

Over the last few days, we have seen an outpouring of grief from lawmakers across the country in the wake of the horrible act of political violence we saw in Minnesota last weekend.

On Saturday, former Democratic state House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were shot and killed. Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot a total of 17 times but miraculously survived.

Early reporting suggests the suspect, Vance Boelter, is an evangelical Christian and a conservative who attended political rallies for Donald Trump. Boelter was allegedly targeting liberals and abortion rights advocates, and he reportedly had a hit list naming other prominent Democrats.

But there has been a concerted effort among some on the political right to pretend that this targeted, political attack is not what it looks like.

When Trump was asked on Tuesday if he had called Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz about the shootings, the president told reporters: “I don’t want to call him.”

“Look, he appointed this guy to a position. I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out. I’m not calling him. Why would I call him? I could call and say, ‘Hi, how you doing?’ The guy doesn’t have a clue. He’s a mess. So, you know, I could be nice and call, but why waste time?”

Trump’s claim that Walz “appointed” Boelter was likely in response to a story that broke in The New York Post on Saturday afternoon amid all the confusion in the wake of the shooting. It was truly one of the most audaciously cynical things I have ever seen from a Rupert Murdoch-owned publication — and that is really saying something.

An archived version of the headline as it appeared on the Post’s website Saturday read: “Former appointee of Tim Walz sought in deadly shootings of Minnesota lawmaker and her husband, had ‘No Kings’ fliers in car: sources”

In that article, The New York Post took two facts about this case and appeared to use them to manufacture a completely false narrative. First, the fact that the suspect, Boelter, was reappointed to an incredibly obscure little bipartisan commission on workforce development by Walz a few years ago. And second, that the suspect, who was targeting critics of Trump, apparently had flyers for Saturday’s “No Kings” protest in his car. The idea here, it appears, was to paint this guy as some sort of leftist.

Naturally, this conspiracy theory spread in the sewer that is Elon Musk’s social media platform, X. In fact, it was even promoted by Musk himself, who shared the conspiracy initially, adding: “The left is murderously violent.” He later edited the post to read: “The far left is murderously violent.”

Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah helped spread the misinformation by making a number of despicable comments about the shooting on his personal X account. Lee shared an image of the alleged gunman with the caption: “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.”

You have to come to one of two conclusions here: Either Lee is so childishly gullible that he will believe even the most outlandish conspiracy with the flimsiest of evidence. Or he is so unfathomably cynical that he knows it’s a lie but wants his followers to believe it anyway.

On Monday, as Lee dodged reporters, Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota read her colleague the riot act about how cruel his posts were.

On Tuesday, Lee finally deleted the posts in question. But the damage has been done. There are millions of people who will forever take it as a cardinal truth that the man who allegedly murdered multiple Democrats and attempted to murder more was not a right-wing devout Christian, as early reports have suggested, but actually a leftist.

It really is hard to overstate the threat to the very fabric of American democracy posed by Musk, his website and the Murdoch enterprises — but it was on full display this weekend.