On Saturday, former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were shot and killed in what Gov. Tim Walz described as a “politically motivated assassination.” State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were also shot at their home, 9 miles away from the Hortman residence. All of the lawmakers who were targeted were Democrats.
Shooting victims Senator John A. Hoffman and Rep. Melissa Hortman.
Subsequent reporting on the suspected shooter of both incidents has indicated that he was a supporter of President Donald Trump and held similar conservative political views to Trump and the Republican Party.
Vance Boelter, the suspected shooter, was arrested on Sunday. He is accused of impersonating a police officer while allegedly committing the crimes in question.
The Associated Press spoke to his friends and former colleagues, and according to them Boelter was a supporter of Trump who attended Trump campaign rallies. Boelter also allegedly opposed abortion. According to law enforcement sources who spoke to AP and CNN, there was a list of health care officials and abortion rights advocates—including leaders of Planned Parenthood, a frequent target of Republican rhetoric—found in an SUV that belonged to Boelter that was parked near the home where the Hortman shooting took place.
CNN also reports that in a speech given in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2023, Boelter expressed his opposition to LGBTQ+ rights.
“There’s people especially in America, they don’t know what sex they are, they don’t know their sexual orientation, they’re confused. The enemy has gotten so far into their mind and their soul,” he said.
Boelter previously registered to vote as a Republican and identified himself in a 2019 LinkedIn post as a Trump voter.
Vance Boelter as he was arrested late Sunday.
Trump is a supporter and promoter of political violence, most notably on Jan. 6, 2021, when he incited the attack on the U.S. Capitol, a criminal attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election that he lost to former President Joe Biden. Trump has since pardoned hundreds of attackers convicted after the incident.
Experts on national security have labeled Trump a terrorist leader, noting that his incendiary rhetoric and support for politically motivated violence is identical to other offenders, both domestic and international.
Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security, explained the relationship between Trump’s inciting rhetoric and his supporters in a 2021 Mother Jones article: “He tells them where to go. He tells them what to do. He tells them why they’re angry.”
The reported views of the alleged shooter align with the positions of the Republican Party and Trump in particular.
Republicans have opposed the legal right to an abortion and spent decades pushing for Roe v. Wade to be overturned. Following the election of Trump in 2016 this goal was achieved thanks to the conservative justices he appointed to the Supreme Court, along with justices appointed by former President George W. Bush.
Trump has promoted falsehoods about abortion, demonizing the Democratic Party for purportedly supporting abortion “after birth.”
Incidents of right-wing violence have increased over the last few years, alongside the rise of Trump as a political leader in America. As president, Trump has decreased funding and resources previously used at the federal level to combat political violence.
Atrocities like the Minnesota killings have conservative and Republican fingerprints all over them, and there is no end in sight.
Correction: A previous version of this story had the incorrect day of the shootings.
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