In 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, as well as 2022, that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” published profiles of the U.S. Senator from Utah, Mike Lee. Our quick take on Mike Lee is that every policy he doesn’t like (The Affordable Care Act, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Violence Against Women Act (!), child labor laws (!), FEMA, disaster relief (!), the Food and Drug Administration, the 14th Amendment, the 17th Amendment… etc.) he has the nasty habit declaring unconstitutional (which is the job of the Supreme Court, not a senator). Sen. Lee is also one of Sen. Ted Cruz’s few allies in the Senate and was one of the most recognizable faces seen during the 2013 Shutdown, including at the rally the weekend before it ended at the World War II memorial where a pastor demanded that President Obama “put down his Quran and come out with his hands up”, before Tea Party “patriots” started grabbing barricades to throw in front of the gates of the White House while some waved Confederate flags. Y’know… nice, healthy rhetoric worthy of the movement.
Our 2015 update on Mike Lee featured his joining the ranks of the #47 Traitors and signing his name onto a letter to the leaders of Iran meant to sabotage negotiations the Obama administration was having with Iran, his belief that the Supreme Court actually does not have the power to overturn same-sex marriage, and the fact that he submitted federal “religious freedom” law legislation to attempt to allow the legal discrimination of LGBTQ citizens based on someone’s “deeply held religious faith” (the bill went absolutely nowhere). He was confident enough that he would be victorious in his re-election effort in 2016 that he spent far more time helping his pal Ted Cruz campaign for president, and not just remaining on the fence about Donald Trump as a prospective nominee the whole time, but calling on him to step down as their nominee in October of 2016 (presumably so Ted Cruz could take his place as the nominee).
As an investigation was just beginning by the United States’ intelligence community into the Trump campaign and Russia potentially colluding to change the outcome of the American election, and Mike Lee was quick to declare that “I don’t see any evidence of anything happening here, so as a result, I think it’s time to move forward. It’s time to wrap this thing up and it’s time to move on.” With the amount of revelations spinning out about Trump/Russia, Mike Lee could not keep his finger in the dyke forever. As of mid-July 2018, he was talking about how Donald Trump needed to “step down” to salvage any kind of legacy.
And that was BEFORE Trump’s humiliation by Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, but slightly after Trump passed over Mike Lee and his brother Thomas, a Utah Supreme Court Justice for the U.S. Supreme Court, and instead chose Brett Kavanaugh (likely because Kavanaugh thinks presidents should be above the law). Lee continued to carry water for Trump regarding the Mueller investigation, complaining not only about Democrats reading it and wanting to protect future elections, but literally booking himself on The View to whine about it and claim he didn’t see evidence of a crime. Which is amazing because Mueller literally spells out ten different ways Trump committed obstruction of justice during the FBI’s investigation. It’s like he didn’t read the report, y’know?
Mike Lee also was openly discussing eliminating all public protected government lands as a policy of the United States in 2018 because apparently rejecting the Bears’ Ears Monument in Utah wasn’t enough for him. Even since that point, he has managed to have some real low lights:
- July 23rd, 2019: Sen. Lee votes against the Zadroga Act, to provide medical care for the 9-11 First Responders.
- January 31st, 2020: Mike Lee votes against witnesses being allowed in the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, effectively making it a “trial”.
- February 5th, 2020: Lee votes against the first impeachment of Donald Trump, in spite of the mountain of evidence showing that he solicited foreign assistance in the 2020 elections.
- February 25th, 2020: Lee co-sponsors and votes for the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, an insane piece of anti-choice legislation that would ask abortion providers to try to admit aborted fetuses to a hospital if they were “alive” after the procedure, which is medically impossible given the age that abortions can be performed at.
- July 2nd, 2020: Mike Lee begins a hyperbolic name-calling tantrum shortly after failing to push through a resolution condemning protests against police violence as “mob violence”, going on to say that Democrats were challenging him based on “bat guano-inspired insanity”, adding:
- January 6th, 2021: In the middle of the Capitol attack, as insurrectionists are storming the building, Donald Trump tries to call Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, but instead, dials Mike Lee and leaves a bizarre voice mail, which in the days that follow, the press get their hands on audio.
- February 13th, 2021: Lee votes to acquit Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, after at one point during the trial, trying to sabotage Democrats’ case against him by claiming their portrayal of his statements on the phone call, and denying it took place when he’d already previously confirmed it.
- March 6th, 2021: Sen. Lee votes against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because he can’t be bothered to care if people need financial assistance during a pandemic.
- May 28th, 2021: Lee votes against the creation of a non-partisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6th attack.
- August 10th, 2021: Mike Lee votes against the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
- December 14th, 2021: Lee votes against raising the debt ceiling, jeopardizing the United States’ credit rating.
- February 28th, 2022: Mike Lee votes against the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have established a right to physicians to perform abortions to save their patients’ lives. He then boycotts Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address that night, refusing to even be tested for Covid-19 as required before the proceedings.
- March 30th, 2022: Lee votes against putting the extremely qualified nominee, Judge Kentanji Brown-Jackson, onto the Supreme Court.
- May 25th, 2022: Mike Lee responds to the mass shooting at Uvalde, Texas, by claiming that the real cause of mass shootings in our country was “fatherlessness”. (The shooter at Uvalde lived in a home with a mother and father. So do a majority of mass shooters.)
- May 26th, 2022: Sen. Lee votes against the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022, because at this point, domestic terror is a policy plank of authoritarian Republicans.
- July 27th, 2022: Mike Lee votes against the PACT Act, blocking additional funding towards veterans exposed to “burn pits” while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, in a vote conducted out of spite that Democrats passed the Act the prior day. Several Republicans are seen shaking hands and fist bumping to celebrate screwing over the vets, while releasing a series of photos of the Senate GOP Caucus filling USO boxes and claiming they “support the military”.
- August 2nd, 2022: After a week of outage after Republicans used the filibuster to block the PACT Act, another vote is held on the bill… Sen. Lee is one of 11 Republicans who vote against it again out of spite.
- February 9th, 2023: During the State of the Union address by President Biden, Mike Lee makes incredulous faces when Biden mentions Republicans are a threat to Social Security, as if he hasn’t been on record to call it “unconstitutional”.
Mike Lee was inexplicably re-elected to a third term in the Senate, surviving an Independent challenge from Evan McMullin, who hit him hard in debates about his seditious activities in and around Jan. 6th, 2021. And yet… Utah voters found that not an issue, and sent a man who offers them nothing, and wants to take away what little the government might do for them back to DC for six more years.
The only way Senator Mike Lee is going to be taken out of office, it seems, is if he’s convicted of seditious conspiracy, and considering in the build-up to January 6th, he was exchanging texts with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows including one on December 8th, 2020 about creating a slate of “fake electors”… that is going to be something Merrick Garland and the Dept. of Justice might take a look at. Also something that should be added into the evidence log? Only a few weeks prior to that, he straight up declared “America is not a democracy” on social media.
We’ve seen a lot of indictments to make us happy lately. More in the direction of people like Mike Lee would make us smile a little bit more.