Sen. Ted Cruz waded straight into the political-violence minefield on CNN, insisting a gunman who allegedly shot two Democratic lawmakers and kept a “hit list” of abortion providers wasn’t a right-wing attacker at all. “It is only one side that justifies this violence,” Cruz declared on The Source with Kaitlan Collins, arguing political bloodshed is “a left-wing problem.”
Collins pushed back, pointing to the summer assassinations and shootings of Minnesota Democrats, including the killing of House Speaker Melissa Hortman and a separate attack that wounded state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, as proof that Democrats have been targeted, too.
WATCH:
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on the Charlie Kirk assassination: “We don’t have a motive yet. We don’t know yet. We’re waiting…”
Sen. Ted Cruz: “Of course we know. Come one. ‘We don’t have a motive yet. We know we don’t have a motive yet.’ Really, that’s CNN’s position? He… pic.twitter.com/n2ERQpoa73
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) September 17, 2025
Cruz’s counterpunch: the suspect in the Minnesota rampage, 57-year-old Vance Boelter, was “deranged” and not acting as a conservative foot soldier, and, he noted, Boelter had once been appointed to a state workforce board by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz. That appointment is real, though fact-checks stress it was a large, unpaid advisory board with thousands of gubernatorial appointees across agencies and no evidence of a personal tie.
Investigators say Boelter left behind a list of Democratic officials across multiple states, along with abortion providers, that he allegedly compiled ahead of the June attacks. He’s been indicted on federal charges tied to the murders of Hortman and her husband and the shootings of Hoffman and his wife. Reporting from the Associated Press and local outlets describes Boelter as a devout Christian with politically conservative views who attended Trump campaign rallies, complicating efforts to slot him neatly into a partisan box.
Cruz’s CNN appearance came less than a week after the September 10 assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, a killing that has already ignited a coast-to-coast brawl over motive, rhetoric, and blame. Prosecutors in Utah have charged 22-year-old Tyler Robinson with aggravated murder and other counts, saying he targeted Kirk over politics and later texted that he’d had “enough” of Kirk’s “hatred.” Officials say they will seek the death penalty.
This you? https://t.co/nPPT3kZBED pic.twitter.com/EsH7yHhRfF
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) September 16, 2025
On set, Cruz folded the Kirk case into his broader narrative that “the left” condones violence, citing social posts cheering the murder. Collins noted the spectrum of recent attacks, including Democrats slain or targeted, and pressed how Cruz could declare political violence a one-sided phenomenon. The exchange grew tense, with Cruz rejecting her framing and doubling down that media “both-sidesism” masks a lopsided problem.
As the Minnesota storyline has evolved, so has the debate over Boelter’s ideology. While Republicans highlight the Walz appointment to argue he wasn’t a movement conservative, records and interviews underscore a more complicated profile: religious, anti-abortion, previously registered Republican, and present at Trump rallies, alongside a sprawling target list that prosecutors say centered Democrats and reproductive-health providers. It’s a portrait that resists easy spin on cable-news soundbites.
Vance Boelter told the New York Post that he supported Trump. He told the Blaze that he took jobs at funeral homes to investigate if the COVID vaccine was killing people. He was MAGA.
Ted Cruz is wrong. https://t.co/b9SMMavc51 pic.twitter.com/2gVM88fgy5
— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) September 17, 2025
Cruz is betting voters will remember the images and the vitriol after Kirk’s killing, and buy his claim that today’s violence runs mostly one way. His critics are just as sure the Minnesota case, the federal indictments, and the paper trail show a grimmer truth: that America’s rage is bipartisan, and assigning all the blame to one team is more about politics than public safety.
