Saturday, June 21, 2025

YOUR RIGHT-WING NEIGHBORS STILL DON'T BELIEVE THE MINNESOTA SHOOTER WAS A CONSERVATIVE IDEOLOGUE

Prominent right-wing figures who tried to portray the recent Minnesota shootings as left-on-left violence have been widely criticized. Senator Mike Lee, one of the worst offenders, took down tweets implying that the shooter was a "Marxist" (a right-wing euphemism for "Democrat") and implicating Governor Tim Walz in the murder plan.

But the right won't let this go. Yesterday, Alpha News, a Minnesota site with ties to GOP-affiliated groups, reported this:
Assassination suspect Vance Boelter wrote a letter in which he blamed Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz for the murderous rampage Boelter committed, according to sources.

Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the investigation have confirmed to Alpha News that Boelter’s so-called confession letter was intended for Kash Patel, the director of the FBI.
A later story in The Minnesota Star Tribune offered clarification:
In a rambling, conspiratorial letter addressed to the FBI, alleged assassin Vance Boelter claimed Gov. Tim Walz instructed him to kill U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar so that Walz could run for the U.S. Senate, according to two people familiar with the contents of the letter.

The letter ... is incoherent, one and a half pages long, confusing and hard to read, according to two people familiar with the letter’s contents. It includes Boelter alleging he had been trained by the U.S. military off the books, and that Walz, who is not running for Senate, had asked him to kill Klobuchar and others.
Some right-wing influencers are taking the allegation against Walz literally.


Others are being more "responsible" -- which, to right-wingers, means acknowledging that Walz had nothing to do with the shootings, but also arguing that a guy who shot several Democrats and wanted to shoot many more couldn't possibly have had a political motive and was just a sad, apolitical insane person.

Townhall:
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) even tried to cast Boelter as a crazed right-winger. That narrative quickly fell apart due to a lack of evidence. Also, left-wingers are the ones driving today’s political violence—evidence to that effect is overwhelming.
PJMedia:
There is no evidence that support for Trump or any conservative cause motivated Boelter’s actions. Instead, his violent spree was rooted in a deranged fixation on Walz, a far cry from the media’s initial narrative that sought to weaponize the tragedy against the pro-Trump right.

In short, Boelter is just a wacko. His letter is a testament to his fractured mind, not a manifesto of political grievance. The media’s rush to blame conservatives and the governor’s passive complicity in allowing false narratives to spread are failures that demand scrutiny.
And what's the result of this? COVER-UP! Here's RedState:
Details about a letter written by Minnesota assassin Vance Boelter have been released, and they paint a much clearer picture of his state of mind and why he did what he did. They also give a pretty good indication of why this story disappeared from the news so quickly.
And more from PJMedia:
This deliberate misinformation campaign explains why the story vanished from the headlines so quickly. Once the facts emerged, the narrative that fit the media’s partisan agenda collapsed. The silence that followed speaks volumes about the lengths to which some will go to manipulate public perception and exploit tragedy for political gain.
Yes, evil liberals are trying to bury the story of the Minnesota shootings, and the evidence is reporting on new developments in the story that appeared in the state's most prominent newspaper.

Why isn't this still the biggest story in America? Because this is America. I have a rule of thumb about this rage-saturated (and gun-saturated) country: We're so desensitized to violence that stories like these drop out of the headlines almost immediately if fewer than five people are killed. At this point, the correct number might be ten. But in this sick country, two dead is nothing.

I'll make an exception for an incident involving the president or a current presidential candidate -- or, because we live in a plutocracy, a prominent CEO. Otherwise, these stories fade fast.

David French, a conservative evangelical, has no problem linking Boelter's ideology to the deeds he's accused of:
Boelter’s roommate identified him as a President Trump-supporting Republican, and Boelter voted in the 2024 Republican primary. And he wasn’t just a Republican. He was also a 1990 graduate of the Dallas-based Christ for the Nations Institute and engaged in missionary activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he delivered exuberant sermons that soon appeared online.

In other words, Boelter wasn’t just a political assassin; he was a Christian assassin — and a person deeply connected to one of America’s most radical religious movements.

Christ for the Nations isn’t a staid, traditional seminary. It opened its doors in 1970. One of its founders was an extremist Pentecostal pastor named James Gordon Lindsay, who was part of a spiritual movement called the New Order of the Latter Rain.

... elements of Latter Rain are now part of a movement called the New Apostolic Reformation, or N.A.R.

... The New Apostolic Reformation — and its close cousin, the independent charismatic movement — houses the most radical Christian Trumpists. Deeply influenced by prophecy, they see Trump as divinely destined to save America from the godless left and its political party, the “demoncrats,” who are doing Satan’s bidding here on earth.
Even if, for some reason, Boelter thought he was acting on behalf of Walz, his target list was unquestionably ideological, as even the reporter covering the story for Alpha News acknowledges.


in 2023, Walz signed a bill enshrining reproductive rights in Minnesota state law. Did Boelter not know that? Did he not pay attention to the pro-choice Kamala Harris/Tim Walz presidential campaign? And if all this was done so Walz could run for Senate, why shoot two state legislators? They weren't impediments to a Walz run. And in any case, Walz has chosen not to run in 2026 for the Minnesota Senate seat that's being vacated by Tina Smith, who's retiring. Why would Walz want to take Klobuchar's seat if he doesn't want Smith's?

I wonder whether this note says what we're being told it says. If the reporting is accurate, I suspect the note was a clumsy attempt to shift blame to yet another Democratic enemy -- and now many of Boelter's fellow right-wingers appear to be persuaded.
Posted by Steve M. at 10:07 AM 8 Comments
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