Sunday, June 15, 2025

YOUR RIGHT-WING NEIGHBORS THINK THE MINNESOTA SHOOTINGS WERE LIBERAL-ON-LIBERAL VIOLENCE (updated)

I'm puzzled by one aspect of what we're learning about Vance Boelter, the suspect in the shootings of two Democratic state legislators from Minnesota. What I don't understand is how he managed to get himself appointed to state boards twice. The New York Times explains that this wasn't a case of Democratic governors knowingly appointing a Republican:
The suspect identified by the authorities, Vance Boelter, 57, was appointed several times by Minnesota governors to the Workforce Development Board...

Mr. Boelter was appointed to the board in 2016 by Mark Dayton, a Democrat who was then the governor. More recently, he was appointed by Gov. Tim Walz, also a Democrat. The board has 41 members who are appointed by the governor, and its goal is to improve business development in the state.

A state report in 2016 listed Mr. Boelter’s political affiliation as “none or other,” and another report in 2020 listed him as having “no party preference.” Voters do not declare political affiliation when they register in Minnesota.
What puzzles me is why someone who seemed to drift from job to job was in a position to get government appointments. Boelter doesn't exactly seem like a pillar of the community:
State reports and his LinkedIn profile indicate that he was recently a general manager of a 7-Eleven in Minneapolis and, before that, had worked as the general manager of a gas station in St. Paul. A report in 2017 listed him as an executive at an energy company.

More recently, he had said on LinkedIn that he was the chief executive of a company called Red Lion Group, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, dedicated to creating “good jobs for local people,” according to its website.

In a video posted online, seemingly for an educational course, Mr. Boelter said he had picked up work at funeral homes to help pay his bills....

The website for Mr. Boelter’s security company makes expansive claims about his work experience, which could not immediately be verified, including that he had been “involved with security situations” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and that he had worked for “the largest U.S. oil refining company, the world’s largest food company based in Switzerland and the world’s largest convenience retailer based in Japan.”

I.R.S. tax forms show that Mr. Boelter and his wife once led a Christian nonprofit called Revoformation Ministries. An archived version of the group’s website described Mr. Boelter as becoming an ordained minister in 1993.
Boelter is married, but the Times says he stayed "several days a week" at the Minneapolis apartment of a childhood friend, David Carlson, who has said that Boelter is a Trump supporter.

KARE 11 TV in the Twin Cities reports that Vance Boelter's best friend says Boelter voted for Trump and is "a strong supporter"

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) June 14, 2025 at 7:24 PM

In an unearthed sermon, Boelter rails against gay and trans people:


And yet your right-wing neighbors think Boelter, who reportedly had a hit list targeting "prominent pro-choice individuals in Minnesota, including many Democratic lawmakers who have been outspoken about pro-choice policy positions," was a Democrat attacking fellow Democrats for betraying the liberal cause.

It's true that Melissa Hortman, who was killed along with her husband, voted for a bill that took healthcare away from undocumented immigrants:
... Hortman ... made headlines earlier this week for being the only Democratic vote in the state House to vote to repeal taxpayer-funded healthcare coverage for adult illegal immigrants.

"I know that people will be hurt by that vote and I’m – we worked very hard to try and get a budget deal that wouldn’t include that provision," she said following the vote that she said was done in order to move the budget forward in a split legislature....
However:
Sen. John Hoffman and his wife were also shot on Saturday and are hospitalized following surgery.

... Hoffman voted against the proposal....
On the right, it's now widely believed that 100% of political violence in America is the work of liberals and leftists. All political violence is left-wing and everyone on the left is violent.

So here are some comments in response to an ABC News Facebook post about the shooting:
The party of love and acceptance till you disagree with them with the slightest thing. Then you become target number.

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Both just sided with republicans on a bill.... Go figure......
(Not true, as noted above.)
She was also recently the only Democratic senator to vote against healthcare for adult illegal immigrants.
I guess they didn’t like that .
I wish we could ask JFK Junior, his opinion on the ordeal
(Many right-wingers believe that Hillary Clinton was involved in the John F. Kennedy Jr.'s death, which happened in 1999, because she didn't want him to run for the New York Senate seat she won the following year. Among those who find this idea credible is football star Aaron Rodgers.)

There's more blame-the-left talk in the comments at Gateway Pundit:
the minute i saw targeted doxxing/killing, i knew it wad the Democrats, didnt matter the target was one, knew they did something their own didnt like.

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Thats this "Democracy" they cherish so much, mob rule.

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99.9% of any of this "predicted" violence is nothing more than standard Marxist revolution tactics and will be carried out by Marxists. First and foremost targets will be those marxist-leftists who break rank and threaten their coalition. Notice how they tend to vote in a complete block, with no dissent? There's a reason ..

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Bolsheviks taking out the disloyal.

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100%. They have to have unbroken ranks because if 1 leaves more will leave. Look how much they hate Tulsi and RFK jr. It is their version of self discipline. When this phase of Marxist revolution occurs, the violence goes off the charts.
(So why haven't there been assassination attempts against Tulsi Gabbard and Robert Kennedy Jr.?)
You cross the dim party, and they won't just try to cross you back, they'll X you out if possible.

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Do the Klintons ring a bell?🤔

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So does Seth Rich
Democrat who crossed a line
A right-wing podcaster weighs in:


No liberal or leftist has tried to shoot and of the numerous Democratic senators who have voted for President Trump's horrible Cabinet appointees. No Democrat tried to shoot Chuck Schumer or the other Democrats who voted to advance the GOP's spending resolution in March. There have been no assassination attempts on Democrats who've left the party this year (former Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, DNC fundraiser Lindy Li, Kentucky state senator Robin Webb, Florida state legislators Jason Pizzo, Hillary Cassel, and Susan Valdés), nor does anyone seem to be taking shots at Democrats who incessantly denounce their own party: John Fetterman, Rahm Emanuel, James Carville, Jared Golden, and even pre-military occupation Gavin Newsom.

I'm not a huge fan of liberals and progressives who say that all political violence in America is right-wing -- the recent murder of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington and the Molotov cocktail attack in Colorado on a group seeking to draw attention to Israeli hostages in Gaza make it clear that some politically violent people aren't on the right. But I don't see a lot of conspiratorial thinking on the left when these incidents take place -- at least not the kind that attempts to rewrite the ideological histories of the perpetrators.

But much of the right believes that all political violence is committed by people who are on the left, overtly or covertly. That's cult thinking.

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UPDATE: Here's a wingnut Saturday Night Live alum spreading this craziness:



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UPDATE: Now Republican senators are spreading the lie. (The post directly below includes is a doorcam image of the shooter in a latex mask.)

This is an egregiously shameful tweet from a US senator

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) June 15, 2025 at 1:46 PM

It’s not just Mike Lee — Bernie Moreno is pretending that a registered Republican evangelical anti-abortion Trump voter who assassinated a Democrat and had more on his hit list is a representative of “the extreme left”

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— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) June 15, 2025 at 3:56 PM

And no pundit who clutches pearls whenever a Democrat strays a millimeter over the line will ever call them on this kind of routine group libel. (And yes, this is about Democrats -- to Republicans in 2025, "Marxists" and "the extreme left" are synonyms for "Democrats.")
Posted by Steve M. at 10:37 AM

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