This weekend, over a thousand mourners attended the funeral of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, who were killed in an attack that Minnesota’s chief federal prosecutor has called an assassination. Former President Joe Biden attended. Former Vice President Kamala Harris was there, too. But the current president of the United States was nowhere to be found.
According to Fox News, the day of the funeral Trump was playing a round of golf with Republican leaders. He also had time to rant on Truth Social, including a post asking, “WHY ARE THE DEMOCRATS ALWAYS ROOTING AGAINST AMERICA???”
Trump has displayed not only indifference but outright callousness in the wake of the attacks.
Authorities say the Hortmans were killed in their home by a man impersonating a police officer and that the same man also shot and seriously wounded Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife. Authorities say the killings were politically motivated; according to CNN, the vehicle he left behind at a crime scene contained “a hit list with nearly 70 names,” and the names were “mostly Democratic politicians or figures with ties to abortion rights, including Minnesota lawmakers Rep. Ilhan Omar and Sen. Tina Smith.” He also reportedly voted for Trump, according to interviews with his childhood friend and videos of his sermons posted online.
At a time of extreme political polarization and rising violence against political figures, Trump had an opportunity to help turn the temperature down by attending the funeral. As Johns Hopkins University political scientist Lilliana Mason has explained, political leaders have a tremendous influence on whether the public thinks that violence is an acceptable way to pursue political goals. Instead, Trump has displayed not only indifference but outright callousness in the wake of the attacks.
Trump did issue a statement condemning the killings. “Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America. God Bless the great people of Minnesota, a truly great place!” he said the day the Hortmans were murdered. But he also went out of his way to display disregard toward Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, implying he may be partially responsible for the attacks, or at least for the course of events leading up to them.
“I don’t really call him. He’s look — he appointed this guy to a position,” Trump said to reporters days after the shooting, after he was asked if he had given Walz a call. “I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out. I’m not calling him. why would I call 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 I could be nice and call, but why waste time?”
Walz did reappoint the suspect, Vance Boelter, to a large nonpartisan workforce development board about six years ago. (Boelter had no criminal record and had first been appointed by the governor before Walz.) But the idea that Walz was in some sense responsible for the shootings is absurd and irresponsible. What Trump was doing was adding weight to MAGA misinformation and attempting to cast the shooting as a typical round of partisan point-scoring, and essentially trying to lay the shooting at the feet of Democrats as a party. Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah posted on X, “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.” (He later deleted the post.)
A responsible leader would have used a political assassination as an opportunity to bring the nation together at a time when political divides are going from rancorous to dangerous. But Trump pardoned violent Jan. 6 insurrectionists. He treats political violence differently based on who’s doing it and who’s on the receiving end of it.
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