Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) prompted a conversation on MSNBC about the GOP's dehumanization of people they oppose.
On Tuesday, Lee deleted posts on X that joked about the assassination of one Democratic official and her husband and the attempted assassination of another lawmaker in Minnesota over the weekend.
Lee faced backlash for days, with U.S. Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) confronting him to explain that those who were killed were real people.
Sarah Longwell, a Republican focus group expert and publisher of The Bulwark, noted that the "degradation of Mike Lee" is a timeline that matches up with the "degradation of people's behavior on social media" and of the Republican Party itself.
"I think that if there's going to be any salvation for any of us, it's going to be rediscovering the decency and the humanity that that Sen. [Smith] brought to him by saying, this is shameful behavior. Like, you know better. I'm your colleague. Like, don't, don't do this. Don't be like this."
Longwell related it to Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who dismissed concerns by her constituents about Medicaid by saying they were all going to die anyway. Ernst then doubled down, walking through a cemetery to continue mocking her constituents with a faux apology for bursting their bubble.
"That doubling down has become standard operating procedure for Republicans," said Longwell. "So, for someone as far gone as Mike Lee appeared to be, over the last few years, to see him take [the post] down — it'd be better if he apologized. It'd be better if he did more. But at least he's taking them down. That's a start."
That's when "Deadline: White House" host Nicolle Wallace expressed a moment of frustration. "It just strikes me that the bar is so freaking low. We're not talking about a Republican senator who lost his mind, I think."
She recalled a Tim Alberta report from several years ago that detailed Lee's "descent into madness."
"And it's totally tangled up with the mythology of the manosphere. But Joe Rogan's been micro-breaking up with Trump in little tiny ways every week for about the last six weeks. I mean, it's not masculine to make fun of someone who's been assassinated. It's not even a sentence anyone should have to utter. It's bats--- crazy. What is wrong with him?" she asked.
See the clip below or at the link here.
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