Trump’s Selective Memory: “Not Familiar” With Assassinated Democratic Lawmaker While Raging About “Left-wing Violence”

Failures

from the priming-more-violence dept

Donald Trump’s response to political violence this week reveals something more sinister than mere hypocrisy—it’s the deliberate construction of a false reality where only certain victims matter and only certain perpetrators exist. After days of raging about “left-wing violence” following Charlie Kirk’s shooting, Trump was asked about Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, who was assassinated by a Trump supporter just months ago. His response exposed the entire game.

When asked by a reporter whether it would have been appropriate to lower flags to half-staff for Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, who was gunned down along with her husband in their home this past June, Trump responded with either breathtaking callousness or stunning ignorance: “I’m not familiar. The who?”

This is quite a contrast:

In response to Kirk’s killing, Trump responded with tremendous urgency. He immediately issued an order to lower American flags to half-staff at the White House, all public buildings, U.S. embassies and military posts. He announced he would award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously. He delivered a wrathful four-minute video address from the White House condemning Kirk’s assassination and promising vengeance against the left. As my colleague Anthony Fisher notes, during that address he made “wildly irresponsible assumptions about the then-unknown suspected killer’s motives. He completely ignored right-wing violence (like the kind he incited in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021), and he explicitly threatened to bring down the force of government on his political opponents.”

But Melissa Hortman? Never heard of her.

So let’s refresh Trump’s supposedly failing memory. On June 14, Vance Luther Boelter—a Trump voter with a hit list containing dozens of Democratic lawmakers, abortion providers, and pro-choice activists—carried out a targeted assassination campaign. Disguised as a police officer, he broke into the homes of two Minnesota Democratic legislators. He murdered House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in their home, along with their dog. State Senator John Hoffman and his wife were shot but survived. This wasn’t random violence—it was a systematic attempt to eliminate Democratic officials.

When this assassination happened, Trump’s response was notably different. He offered a brief, impersonal statement on Truth Social calling the violence “horrific” but did nothing more. No flags at half-staff. No presidential address. No Medal of Freedom. When asked if he had called Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to offer condolences, Trump said it would be a “waste of time” and called Walz “whacked out.”

“I think the governor of Minnesota is so whacked out, I’m not calling him. Why would I call him?” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way back from the G7 summit on Tuesday.

“He’s a mess. So I could be nice and call, but why waste time?” the president added.

This week, when pressed on why he ordered flags lowered for Kirk but not Hortman, Trump claimed he would have done so if Walz had asked. But this conveniently ignores his own words from June, when he explicitly said calling the governor would be pointless because Walz was “a mess.”

The contrast couldn’t be starker, and it’s not just about protocol—it’s about whose lives Trump thinks matter. Charlie Kirk, a partisan Trump-supporting influencer, gets immediate presidential honors, national mourning, and promises of vengeance. Melissa Hortman, an elected official murdered in a targeted political assassination with multiple victims and a hit list of dozens more targets, gets “I’m not familiar. The who?”

This isn’t just political calculation—it’s moral bankruptcy. Trump is essentially telling the country that some political assassinations matter and others don’t, that some victims deserve remembrance while others can be forgotten entirely. Republican lives apparently merit presidential addresses and flag ceremonies. Democratic lives get a shrug and are quickly to be forgotten and never spoken of again.

What makes this even more perverse is Trump’s immediate assumption that Kirk’s shooter was motivated by “left-wing violence”—without evidence and despite indicators pointing elsewhere suggesting that he was just a confused, troubled, deeply online meme-focused kid with no real political ideology fitting into either the traditional “left” or “right” buckets. Meanwhile, when faced with documented right-wing political assassination—complete with clear hit lists—he claims total ignorance.

But nuance and facts have never been Trump’s strong suits when there’s a partisan, hateful narrative to push.

This is the same pattern we’ve seen repeatedly: extensive right-wing violence gets minimized or ignored, while any violence that can potentially be blamed on the left gets amplified and weaponized.

The media’s role in this selective memory problem can’t be ignored either. When right-wing violence occurs, it gets framed as the work of isolated “lone wolves” with mental health issues—individual tragedies disconnected from any broader movement. But when violence can potentially be attributed to the left, it becomes evidence of a dangerous ideological trend that demands soul-searching about the state of political discourse. This framing makes it easier for stories like Hortman’s assassination to fade quickly from national attention, while Kirk’s shooting immediately gets positioned as a symbol of broader leftist extremism, despite the lack of evidence supporting that narrative.

Trump’s “I’m not familiar” response perfectly encapsulates how MAGA world deals with inconvenient violence: ignore it, forget it, pretend it never happened. Then, when violence occurs that can be spun for political gain, suddenly become the world’s most passionate advocate against political violence.

This isn’t about genuine concern for victims of political violence. It’s about maintaining a narrative where the right is always the victim and the left is always the aggressor, even when the facts point in the opposite direction. It’s about ensuring that some deaths matter politically while others disappear down the memory hole.

But the real danger isn’t just Trump’s moral bankruptcy—it’s the information ecosystem he’s creating. By erasing documented right-wing violence while amplifying questionable cases of supposed left-wing attacks, he’s providing his followers with a fundamentally distorted picture of political violence in America. This isn’t accidental. When people like Vance Boelter compiled hit lists of Democratic targets, they were operating within a narrative framework that casts the left as an existential threat while treating attacks on Democrats as forgettable footnotes.

Trump’s selective amnesia sends a clear message to anyone considering political violence: attacks on the right will be remembered, honored, and avenged. Attacks on Democrats will disappear down the memory hole.

That’s not just permission—it’s encouragement.

Filed Under: charlie kirk, donald trump, melissa hortman, partisan violence, political violence, tim walz, vance boelter