On Monday, Utah Sen. Mike Lee made national headlines and sparked a bipartisan backlash for his social media posts spreading unfounded claims, making light of the deadly shooting of Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses and blaming the attacks on “Marxists” and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
State lawmakers from Minnesota who worked with the two victims, including Republicans, criticized Lee’s posts on X, and Lee was confronted and the posts condemned by his U.S. Senate colleagues from Minnesota, Democrats Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith.
Lee deleted some of the more egregious posts Tuesday. He has not apologized.
But for Lee, who has turned his @BasedMikeLee account on X into a megaphone to unleash a barrage of ultra-conservative conspiracy theories and memes and to troll Democrats, his posts about the slayings in Minnesota — while receiving more attention than others who posted about the attack — are only the latest example of Lee’s foray into social media influencing and trolling.
Here are six other examples of when Utah’s senior senator has shared misinformation or been criticized for his posts on X:
A mulligan
The day after an assassination attempt on then-candidate Donald Trump last year, Lee reposted a video of Trump warming up for a round of golf.
“Gets shot[,] Gets up the next day[,] Goes golfing,” the senator posted above the video.
He subsequently posted: “There’s a specific scientific term for this kind of (very unusual) man — you know, the kind of man that gets shot, gets up the next morning, and goes golfing. In case you’re not familiar with this word, I’ll share it with you. The word is ‘badass.’”
But the individual who originally posted the video later clarified that it was taken before the shooting — the video didn’t show the president hitting the links after nearly being killed.
A reader’s note has been added to the post to recognize that the information is false.
Lee eventually acknowledged the video was old. “My bad,” he said. However, the post is still up and has received close to 186,000 “likes” and was reposted more than 16,000 times.
A fake Fed
In November 2023, Lee reposted a security camera image of a January 6, 2021, insurrectionist that — according to the original post by “X America News,” a frequent purveyor of conspiracy theories — appeared to show a man holding a badge.
It feeds into a right-wing suspicion that there were federal agents staging the assault on the Capitol, and Lee amplified the tweet, adding that he was eager to ask then-FBI Director Christopher Wray about the image.
But the man in the image was holding a vape device, not a badge. He had already been convicted and sentenced for his role in storming the Capitol, where he stole a photograph from then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and a wallet from the jacket of a House staffer.
At his sentencing, the man said he was an “idiot” who was swept up in the moment. He did not say he was a federal agent.
Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, who served on the House January 6 committee, called out Lee for the post, responding: “Hey @BasedMikeLee - heads up,” she wrote, “A nutball conspiracy theorist appears to be posting from your account.”
The post — which now has a note from readers explaining the man isn’t holding a badge and was convicted for his action — remains up on Lee’s account. It has received nearly 11,000 likes and been reposted more than 3,400 times.
Killing Carter
In July 2024, Lee reposted a fake news release announcing the passing of former President Jimmy Carter. It included sexual references to former First Lady Nancy Reagan and slang terms referring to Rosalynn Carter, the late wife of the former president. He said at the time that the Carter family was in his prayers.
Lee later deleted the post.
When Carter actually died more than a year later, rather than extending condolences or prayers, Lee went political, posting: “Could another Jimmy Carter ever secure the nomination of today’s Democratic Party?”
Hurricane hijinks
In October 2024, the senator posted a heart-rending picture of a young girl on a life raft clutching a puppy after Hurricane Helene. The image was fake. It made the rounds in right-wing influencer circles to allege that then-President Joe Biden had abandoned the hurricane victims.
Lee deleted the image after being called out for promoting an artificial intelligence-generated image.
Reposting Russia
This February, Lee reposted a video that purported to be Ukrainian soldiers burning Trump in effigy and said: “Not another dime for Ukraine.”
Later, the original poster — a convicted and later pardoned Jan. 6 rioter — acknowledged the video was fake. Moreover, researchers and media outlets reported that it appeared to be Russian propaganda.
He has not deleted the post. It has received more than 23,000 likes and 5,500 reposts.
Fake Epstein files
Lee has made more than 40 posts promoting the notion that Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself while awaiting trial and speculating about what might be in the Epstein files when they are released.
His latest was in April when he sought to cast doubt on reports that one of Epstein’s leading accusers, Virginia Giuffre, had died by suicide. “What’s more likely—the idea that Giuffre committed suicide or Epstein?” he wrote.
Lee even suggested that the U.S. Agency for International Development had paid to have Epstein killed.
Less than a month later, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, leading purveyors of a slew of MAGA conspiracy theories, including that Epstein had been murdered, told Fox Business that Epstein had committed suicide.
“Listen, they have a right to their opinion, but you know a suicide when you see one, and that’s what that was,” Patel said.
Bongino added: “He killed himself. I’ve seen the whole file. He killed himself.”
Lee has not posted about Epstein since — aside from posting that he wished Trump and Elon Musk could reconcile after Musk alleged that the reason that the full Epstein files had not been released was because Trump’s name was in them.
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