The Violence Is The Point

Written By Leeja Miller

Sources:

Transcript:

Hello from Minnesota! You’re tuned into Why, America? I’m Leeja Miller, let’s get started. This weekend, in the early hours of Saturday morning, a man impersonating a cop and wearing a haunting rubber mask rang the doorbell of Minnesota Senator John Hoffman. He then entered the house and shot and wounded Hoffman and his wife. 90 minutes later, he arrived at the home of former speaker of the Minnesota house Melissa Hortman and fatally shot her and her husband Mark. He also shot the family dog, Gilbert, who had to be humanely euthanized after the fact due to his injuries. The shooter then fled on foot, leaving a vehicle that was identical to a police van, lights and all, that contained a list of other prominent Democratic officials and abortion rights activists, as well as No Kings protest posters.

After the police were called to John Hoffman’s residence, an officer had a hunch the shooter might be headed to Hortman’s residence five miles away. When police arrived, they allegedly witnessed the man shoot and kill Mark Hortman through the open door of their home, before he fled on foot.

What ensued was the largest manhunt in the state’s history. They identified the shooter as 57 year old Vance Luther Boelter, and after a two day manhunt across multiple counties, someone who lived near Boelter’s home caught the man on his wildlife camera, one of those cameras that you put in the woods and it captures video of passing wildlife. Well it captured video of a passing gunman this time. Authorities were able to cordon off the area and eventually found him in the middle of a field and were able to apprehend him without incident. He has been charged with two counts of second degree murder, which is the highest charge he could be given via a filed complaint in the state of Minnesota, but prosecutors will be seeking first degree premeditated murder charges against him, which requires going through the process of a grand jury indictment. He is currently in federal custody and has also been charged with six federal counts against him, including stalking and murder, charges that could lead to the death penalty.

AD

You guys even though everything seems really bad, one thing is still really really good: bread. I am thrilled to say my partner on today’s video is Wildgrain, the first bake from frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, artisanal pastries, and fresh pastas. It’s a carb box, yall. Delivered straight to your door. Wildgrain partners with small bakers and pasta makers across the country to bring you fresh carbs, like what more could you ever possibly want in life? Get that fresh fresh sourdough without the work. They use slow fermentation that can be easier on your belly, richer in nutrients and antioxidants, and can help lower blood sugar spikes. And this is freezer to table in 25 minutes–every item you receive from Wildgrain bakes in 25 minutes or less, so you can enjoy homemade quality whenever you want. Like I’m sorry have you ever just had croissants on demand like oh wow I could really go for a buttery delicious artisanal croissant hot out the oven right now BOOM in 20 minutes you get it. It’s truly thrilling. Recently I tried their biscuits for the first time, specifically the herb parmesan biscuits and like 10 out of 10, such a fun delicious thing to have on hand. And wildgrain even offers completely gluten free boxes. If you want fresh breads, pastries, and pastas delivered straight to your door, and literally why would you not????? Be sure to click on my link in the description and use my code LEEJA30 to get $30 off your first box PLUS you get FREE CROISSANTS FOR LIFE if you use my link, yeah you heard that right. FREE CROISSANTS FOR LIFE if you use my link below along with my code LEEJA30. Honestly, you’re welcome!!! Thanks wildgrain!!

Melissa Hortman was the former speaker of the Minnesota house of representatives. By all accounts, Hortman was as Minnesotan as they come–hard working, no-nonsense, pragmatic. She spent two decades of her life serving the people of Minnesota in the state legislature. During her tenure as speaker, she oversaw the passage of legislation that championed abortion rights, free school lunches for kids, and the expansion of paid medical and family leave. Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon remembered her, saying “She was steely and strategic and savvy and yet so likable as a person because she always remembered people’s humanity, even and especially if they were on the other side of the aisle.”

The shooter, Vance Boelter, lived in a rural area about an hour southwest of the twin cities with his wife and rented a room in north Minneapolis he apparently would use when he worked in the area doing overnight shifts for a company that handles eye donations. He was allegedly in the process of trying to get a security company off the ground, which is why he owned a vehicle that looked like a cop car. According to the Wall Street Journal, quote “A website for Praetorian Guard Security Services lists Boelter as part of the leadership and advertises armed residential security and personnel who drive police-style vehicles. “We drive the same make and model of vehicles that many police departments use in the U.S. Currently we drive Ford Explorer Utility Vehicles,” the site says. Law enforcement said a black police cruiser was seen at the lawmakers’ homes. Nobody answered the company’s phone line Saturday.”

According to NPR, quote “In social media posts and websites, Boelter said he had extensive experience as a security professional with "training by both private security firms and by people in the U.S. Military."

NPR found little evidence to support Boelter's account. He appears to have worked most of his career in the food service industry and one long-time friend described parts of Boelter's narrative about his life as "fantasy."”

That longtime friend is David Carlson, his roommate in North Minneapolis, who told local Fox News 9, quote “"He was always kind of into the military stuff, but it was just, we were always like that. Me and him, we would play army men,"” Carlson also confirmed that Boelter was a Trump supporter and strongly against abortion rights.

Boelter's other prior work included work as a pastor at a church in the Congo. He apparently preached internationally, saying he wanted to seek out quote “militant Islamists in order to share the gospel and tell them that violence wasn’t the answer.” This according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal which reviewed an archived website for his ministry.

Boelter may have met Senator Hoffman when Boelter served multiple terms on the Minnesota governor’s Workforce Development Board, where he was first appointed by Democratic Governor Mark Dayton and then by Tim Walz, though for the record governors appoint thousands of people to boards and commissions for unpaid roles, the one Boelter served on had about 60 people and Tim Walz’ office confirmed they weren’t familiar with Boelter.

Boelter’s online presence makes it clear he was a guy who flitted around from job to job, had a lot of big ambitions and ideas but never seemed to get anything off the ground. According to NPR, quote “Boelter apparently worked for a number of years as a convenience store and food services manager, posting this spring on LinkedIn that he was "looking to get back into the U.S. food industry."

"I'm pretty open to positions," Boelter wrote. "Other Leadership positions outside of the Food Industry I'm willing to hear about as well. I have been doing projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa the last three years."” His LinkedIn reeks of a very self important person who hasn’t actually accomplished much in his life but talks a big game. He’s unemployed and trying to find a job but then says he’s “willing to hear about” leadership positions, as though someone is going to beg him to take on a leadership role somewhere. He was unimportant but striving to feel important, and probably absorbed a lot of online rhetoric spewed by other small men trying to make themselves feel better about their own mediocrity.

What happened here in Minnesota over the weekend was horrific and the consequences of the actions of one clearly deranged man, potentially working with accomplices, that is still being determined. But it is also a microcosm and a foreseeable outcome of the growing unrest and violence happening across the country, largely instigated and encouraged by the right. As an example of the callousness with which the right responds to violence, look no further than Republican US Senator Mike Lee, who tweeted about the killings “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.” Labeling Democrats as “marxists” is a favorite habit of the right as a way to dismiss anything and everything that goes against their hardline stances, like when they call a Bush-appointed federal judge a “marxist” for ruling against them. But Mike Lee took it a step further by using despicable politically-motivated violence as a means to make a political statement and, not only that, a political statement that makes no sense. Now the Trump voter who hates abortion and targeted Democrats and abortion activists is a Marxist somehow? It’s a statement that lays bare the clear misuse of the word “Marxist,” a label the right flings around to mean whatever they want it to mean in the moment to the point that it actually doesn’t mean anything when they say it. And it is this spread of disinformation, this lack of condemnation of violence on the right, this often encouragement of violence from the right, that has been breaking down our democracy since Trump first came to office to the point that we no longer have much of any faith in democracy at all.

Trump himself did issue a statement condemning the violence, though he did not reach out to our governor as presidents typically do when violent incidents occur in a state, and he then turned around and called Walz “grossly incompetent”, instead of addressing the violence or doing anything to show true leadership in the face of violence, he used it as a means to make a political statement against our governor Tim Walz, as retaliation for the 2024 election in which Walz ran as the VP candidate with Kamala Harris.

In January of last year, so 18 months ago, I made a video about how political violence will erode our democracy. Sitting here, a year and a half later, five months into the second Trump administration, it is actually wild watching that video back, because it hasn’t been that long and yet so much has happened to deeply erode our democracy in that time. Back then I was warning about the potential for the erosion, today I am pointing out how we have arrived at what I warned against back then.

A lot of the politically-motivated violence and threats we saw especially leading up to the 2024 election was directed at election officials, those tasked with overseeing our elections. The Brennan Center conducted a nationwide survey of election officials early in 2023. The results found that nearly ONE THIRD of all election officials surveyed had personally been abused, harassed, or threatened because of their job. And nearly THREE QUARTERS of all survey respondents felt that threats had increased in recent years and nearly half indicated they were concerned about the safety of their colleagues.

Now idk about you, but I can’t think of a single day job I’d be willing to put my literal life on the line for, okay. Even one as noble as ensuring the smooth functioning of democratic elections. And a lot of people feel the same. That same Brennan Center survey found that we were losing the equivalent of 1 to 2 election officials every. Single. Day. At that rate, they estimated that 20% of election officials were running their very first presidential election in 2024. But that’s just the average, some of this turnover has been concentrated in the states where the worst of the election denial and, therefore, violence occurred, like Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Texas. And this is just the information we know about. The Brennan Center estimates that nearly half of all harassment and intimidation directed at election officials goes unreported.

Despite hundreds and hundreds of reported threats against election workers, only about 15 people nationwide had been charged for the crimes as of January last year. 15.

Election workers of course aren’t the only ones on the receiving end of violent threats and harassment, especially now that Trump has taken office for a second time. Numerous state elected officials, members of Congress, and even members of local school boards have received threats stemming from their work in government, including Christmas swatting calls in 2023, threatening phone calls and online messages, and doxxing, when an anonymous poster shares the address and phone number of targets online to promote further abuse against them. According to Vox, in 2016, prior to the election of Donald Trump, the Capitol Police recorded less than 900 threats against members of Congress. In 2017, after his election, that number QUADRUPLED and continued to increase every year until they peaked at 9,700 in 2021. Journalists at the Washington Post reviewed the FEC filings of candidates for the House and Senate and found that the amount of money those candidates were spending on their personal security had increased by 500 PERCENT between 2020 and 2022.

After the 2020 election, numerous lawsuits were filed to challenge the results of the election. This, in addition to the judges who have touched the numerous civil and 91 criminal charges involving Trump, and now the judges who dare to follow the law and rule against the Trump administration, means that judges are also on the receiving end of threats and intimidation. The Colorado Supreme Court came under attack after deeming Trump ineligible to run for the presidency in that state because he literally participated in an insurrection which is NOT VERY PRESIDENTIAL, FRANKLY. After the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in December 2020 to uphold Biden’s victory over Trump in that state, they too were faced with a barrage of threats. Those threats have continued as the Wisconsin Supreme Court has flipped from majority conservative to majority liberal. One of the justices, Jill Karofsky, said back at the beginning of 2024 “I am really worried that there is going to be a tragedy. I believe people when they say that they want to hurt us or kill us. I don’t think they’re idle threats.”

And of course, as we’ve seen in Minnesota, these aren’t idle threats. That’s also true of threats against judges. US District Judge Esther Salas’s son Daniel Anderl was fatally shot in their family home in New Jersey in 2020 by a lawyer posing as a delivery person. In recent months, pizza deliveries in the name of Daniel Anderl have been placed and sent to the homes of judges and their families who are presiding over the various lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s policies, clearly meant to intimidate the judges.

And anecdotally, those threats have been on the rise, though it’s impossible to know how big of an increase has occurred in threats against local officials, school board members, and judges, because no one has been keeping records for very long, because there was no need. This level of threat is unprecedented. This type of behavior, on a national level or a local level, did not happen before Donald Trump.

While no one on any part of the political spectrum is safe from the increased political violence, there is a common theme in much of the rhetoric and attacks in recent years. And that is Donald Trump. The vast majority of violent threats are coming from people on the far right. The Anti-Defamation League found that, for the third year in a row, all extremist related killings in the US in 2024 were tied to right-wing extremism. In fact in the decade between 2015 and 2024, 76% of the 429 extremist-related deaths were committed by people motivated by right-wing ideologies. And throughout his campaign and presidency, Donald Trump did nothing to dissuade his supporters from violent words or actions, even at times appearing to egg them on.

Surges in violence against individuals happen like clockwork whenever that individual is mentioned in Trump’s speeches and social media posts. And his political allies have followed suit, reinforcing his violent rhetoric and further encouraging his base of supporters by legitimizing language that should be roundly condemned. And while of course Democratic officials are vulnerable to violence from the far right, ironically much of the violence and threats prior to the re-election of Donald Trump were against other Republicans, especially those who spoke out against Donald Trump. Gabriel Sterling was an election official in Georgia during the 2020 election. Despite being a Republican, he spoke out against Trump’s attempts to cast doubt on the election results in Georgia. On top of being one of the numerous officials who were swatted over the holidays in 2023, he has been repeatedly threatened and harassed since the 2020 election. Former speaker of the Arizona house of representatives Rusty Bowers testified before the house committee investigating the January 6th attack. He was also swatted during the holidays. Someone called the cops claiming there was a murdered woman and a pipe bomb in his home, leading the cops to surround his suburban house with his wife and grandson inside.

And all of this further serves Trump, and he knows it. His rhetoric only plays into the fears of his already radicalized base. All the while, the actual documented threat, both physically to our elected officials and societally to our democracy, is coming from the very people who are screaming about stolen elections and existential threats. The call is coming from inside the house. And it has the potential to take us all down with it.

And while we’ve talked about the facts and figures of the growing threat against government officials at all levels and in every branch, let’s talk about how this increased violence has worked over the last few years to dismantle democracy itself. The most obvious and direct outcome, the outcome that these perpetrators of violence are likely actively seeking, is intimidation. While the actual violent outcomes, the physical attacks, this weekend’s murders, etc, are of course horrific, the following through of violence isn’t necessary in order to enact control over politicians and the public at large. This increasing fear of violence is enough to intimidate political leaders and influence their decision-making. These threats could also influence judges, who are at least in theory meant to be the neutral arbiters and interpreters of the law. How can you neutrally interpret what the law says when you know that a certain decision could put your child and spouse at risk, not theoretically but literally. I say this a lot, judges aren’t supreme beings who float above the fray and provide perfectly unbiased political analysis. They are humans. And fight or flight trumps cognitive function even for the most just, intelligent jurist. That has real consequences for democracy, because it undermines public trust in the judicial system when, even if you elect a well-liked and impartial judge, you know that judge can be swayed by fear of physical harm to themselves or their family. Controlling judges through threat and intimidation is inherently undemocratic. And since the re-election of Donald Trump, we have seen Trump himself, as well as his allies and supporters, openly attack and threaten judges online. The outcome of that heated, violent rhetoric, is incredibly predictable.

Congresspeople also aren’t immune to the control that threats can exert over their actions and decisionmaking, both at the federal and at the local level. Back in January of last year when I made my first episode about political violence, when we had a Democratic president, a lot of the threats and violent rhetoric was used to control those Republicans who step out of line with the extremist views often espoused by those prone to issuing threats of violence, aka mostly Trump supporters. And this isn’t just a theory, a biography of Mitt Romney by McKay Coppins revealed that Romney had numerous discussions with fellow Republican politicians who explicitly stated they were changing their votes out of fear. At one point in the biography, Coppins writes “One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety. The congressman reasoned that Trump would be impeached by House Democrats with or without him — why put his wife and children at risk if it wouldn’t change the outcome?” This same conversation happened again during Trump’s Senate impeachment trial. “When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can’t do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right.”

And this has been documented elsewhere as well. Former Ohio congressman Anthony Gonzalez deemed the hostility he faced after opposing Trump to be too much of a risk for his family. Representatives Liz Cheney and Peter Meijer described hearing similar fears from other legislators as well. And all three of these legislators all resigned or were beaten in primaries largely because their own party turned against them for speaking out about Trump. The result of this intimidation over years and now with Trump in the White House again, is that the Republican party has effectively rooted out any opposition from within, so that those who don’t fall in lock step are no longer acting as checks to Trump’s takeover, whether from Republicans in Congress or those in the White House or the Cabinet. Now that the right has been cleansed of any naysayers, the violence has largely been turned towards those remaining judges that won’t be swayed by rhetoric, and the people on the left who attempt to put up a fight. Whether that’s the mayor of a New Jersey town trying to check in on a detention center in his jurisdiction, the Representative who accompanied him, or a sitting Senator attempting to ask Kristi Noem a question being physically assaulted, pushed to the ground, and handcuffed. Or protestors in LA who show up to peacefully protest and are assaulted with tear gas and “less lethal” weapons. Or the reporters keeping record of the protest being targeted by rubber bullets. Or someone, acting alone but with the ringing endorsement of violence from the state being broadcast to him night and day, impersonating a cop and shooting local democratic lawmakers.

And we have now arrived at the point that I warned against in my episode 18 months ago. We are at the point where it doesn’t matter whether or not the threats coming in against public officials, protestors, organizers, the press are credible, or whether they even exist at all. The threat of threats, the fact that so many threats exist, is enough to create real, tangible consequences. Not just to how lawmakers vote out of fear, who runs to be a lawmaker to begin with, but also to the free speech and freedom of assembly rights of everyone. It also impacts our already fraught relationship with cops and ICE. Not only do we have to worry about cops and DHS officers acting violently and illegally, we also now have to worry about people impersonating them and doing violent, illegal things.

A reminder that most of Congress is white, male, and wealthy. If some of the wealthiest, most powerful people in our country can be intimidated into silence, despite having money to pay $5,000 a day for personal security like Mitt Romney does, or buy literal body armor like former representative Peter Meijer did, this type of violence is going to have a very real effect on our ability to express ourselves and to move about the world without fear of violence.

And increasingly, because of Donald Trump and his rhetoric, violence is being seen as a legitimate way to further the right’s political goals. You can see it in right-wing tiktoks and internet content. You can see it in the dramatic uptick of threats of political violence coming from the right. And you can see it in the uptick of actual violence from extremists, which almost exclusively is perpetrated by right-wing activists. Since 2015, there have been at least 41 criminal cases in which the defendant invoked Trump as inspiration for a violent act or threat of violence. There are no comparable cases involving his predecessors Obama and Bush, each of whom served twice as long in office as Trump has so far. And this extremist culture grows as civic culture and trust in democratic institutions has disappeared. And as this acceptance of the use of violence for political ends grows, that in turn further legitimizes those who would commit violent acts, because they increasingly see it as justified because they are doing it in their community’s best interests., they think. And studies have shown that people are substantially more likely to engage in political violence when they feel they have permission from their political representatives to do it. And not only has their favorite political representative, Trump, made repeated positive remarks about violence, he is also a literal convicted felon, a fact which he dismisses as political theater, implicitly indicating that the laws of this country aren’t legitimate and, therefore, breaking them is fair game.

This level of acceptance of violence was seen in the 1850s prior to the Civil War. And it happened on both sides of the aisle. Pro-slavery Democrats passed the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 which violated the Missouri Compromise and opened the western territories to slavery, then used coercion and violence to rig the elections in those territories, with Border Ruffians storming Kansas territory, stuffing ballot boxes, and assaulting and killing free state settlers. The violence made its way to Congress itself when anti-slavery Republican Charles Sumner delivered a speech called The Crime Against Kansas and, in response, a Democratic congressman from South Carolina beat him nearly to death on the Senate floor with a steel-tipped cane. Numerous physical altercations followed in the walls of congress. Pro-slavery Congressmen began showing up armed on the House floor, threatened their Northern colleagues with physical assault, and talked openly of civil war.

On the anti-slavery side, the New England Emigrant Aid Company distributed rifles to homesteaders relocating to Kansas to fight off the border ruffians, and the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society furnished material support for armed insurrections by enslaved people.

This combined to normalize political violence on both sides of the aisle and every level of government and society, and culminated in the Civil War a few years later. It led to a government that was willing to turn away from democracy, embrace vigilantism and treason, and enforce their beliefs through use of force rather than an exchange of ideas. The normalization of political violence is a slippery slope with dangerous consequences. I warned of the erosion of democracy because of that 18 months ago, and we have arrived at that reality FAR quicker than I could have imagined at the time. Because of violent, right wing extremism, egged on by Donald Trump, we have lost faith in our Congress, we have lost even further faith in any law enforcement being confined by any laws, we have lost faith in the Supreme Court. And we have lost faith in the Constitutional protections given to us to speak freely, to dissent from the government, to be free from abduction and interrogation without due process by our government. We live in a fascist state where violence is often encouraged. What happened in Minnesota this weekend is a VERY foreseeable consequence of the reality that Trump and Stephen Miller and his other cronies behind the scenes pulling the strings have brought to fruition in this country.

This problem is so much bigger than what you or I as individuals can hope to solve. As I’ve said numerous times, if you are looking for action items, I would say now is the time to get to know your neighbors. Creating local community and trust in your neighborhood is a great way to begin to take small actions against the fear and hatred and bigotry and violence that this administration wants all of us to succumb to. And continue to speak out against violence, because the more we tolerate it the more it will flourish. I will be here to continue to speak out as well.

If you want to support my work, all my videos are completely ad free and uncensored over on Patreon, Patreon dot com slash leeja miller.

Thank you to my multi-platinum patrons Philly Tech Dude, Marc, Sarah Shelby, Travis, Art, David, R_H, L’etranger (Lukus), Thomas Johnson, and Tay. Your generosity makes this channel what it is, so thank you!

And if you liked this episode, you’ll like the one from last week about why Stephen Miller is a sniveling little creep.

Leeja Miller
Next

Stephen Miller Is A Creep