US Politics
MAGA senator shredded for repost of OJ and Nicole Brown Simpson meme as Elizabeth Warren and Spirit Airlines
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Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) faced sharp criticism online for sharing an internet meme comparing his colleague Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to O.J. Simpson and Spirit Airlines to the late NFL star’s brutally murdered ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson.
Conservatives have criticized Warren for pushing to block the merger between Spirit Airlines and JetBlue during the Biden administration after Spirit Airlines announced its bankruptcy over the weekend.
Spirit announced that it would go belly up, leaving thousands of passengers suddenly scrambling to get to their destinations. The Trump administration had eyed a takeover of the beleaguered company.
In response, Lee reposted an image from a right-wing X account with O.J. Simpson, the late football player who was tried but acquitted of murdering his estranged wife, with text over his face reading “Elizabeth Warren,” and Nicole Brown Simpson reading, “Spirit Airlines.”
“Nailed it,” Lee posted with the image. Lee posted the image not on his official Senate X account, but rather on his personal “BasedMikeLee” account, where he frequently mouths off and gives running commentary on politics.
Lee would later delete the post, but not before he faced sharp criticism.
Simpson stood trial for the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman but was acquitted in a high-profile and racially divisive case in 1995. He was later found civilly liable for both of their deaths.
Almost immediately Monday, Lee faced criticism for the image.
“A murdered mom meme is hysterical, am I right?” Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, tweeted.
“Mike Lee is a US Senator,” another account asked. “What the hell is wrong with him? Is it mental illness? He has been continually posting highly offensive and disgusting posts for a while. His behavior is beneath the dignity of a Senator and he is unfit to serve this country. He needs to resign.”
This is not the first time that Lee has come under criticism for his tweets promoting conspiracy theories. In 2023, X, then known as Twitter, suspended @BasedMikeLee after he appeared to threaten the prime minister of Japan regarding a detained U.S. servicemember. Lee also posted a fake letter claiming to be from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell tendering his resignation.
In 2025, after the killing of Democratic former Minnesota state house Speaker Melissa Hortman, Lee blamed the shooting on Gov. Tim Walz and said “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.”
That prompted both of Minnesota’s Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith to condemn Lee. Smith eventually chased down Lee and personally confronted him about his tweets, which he eventually deleted.
Long a Tea Party rabble rouser who beat an incumbent Republican in the 2010 Republican wave year, Lee initially criticized President Donald Trump in 2016 and endorsed his ally Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in the Republican presidential primary.
But in recent years, he’s been floated as a potential Supreme Court Justice nominee and become much friendlier to Trump. Lee also eschews speaking to reporters in the hallways of the Capitol, often preferring to speak only to right-wing outlets or directly to conservatives on his account.
Personally attacking a fellow senator in the way Lee has has long been considered a breach in decorum. Republican senators condemned Cruz in 2015 for calling then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a liar.
Lee also hails from Utah, where many of his fellow members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints tend to value civility over coarse political language. Despite being overwhelmingly Republican, many of them have an uneasy relationship with President Donald Trump.
