'Stark raving mad:' GOP senator's remarks on white supremacists stun ex-CNN correspondent

A U.S. Senator faced accusations Sunday that he'd lost his grip on reality after he repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that Democrats were responsible for a white supremacist march in Washington D.C. on Independence Day.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) took to X to share numerous posts of the Patriot Front members, who wore white masks and carried Confederate flags, as they moved through the nation's capital Saturday.

"Democrats need to stop reminding America of their racist history," Lee wrote in one post. He added in another, "Patriot Front: Brought to you by leftists who don’t know that patriots don’t wear masks."

Lee was not the only conservative to make this claim.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham floated a similar theory Saturday in an X response to video documenting the group's presence at the Washington Monument.

“I call fake,” Ingraham wrote. “Looks more like Antifa in costume. No one should be allowed to cover their faces.”

Replied Adam Kinzinger, a former GOP U.S. House member from Illinois, "Thats the only defense you have to this? How about condemning it."

And as Ingraham did, Lee faced much criticism and rebuke.

Political commentator Robert Elisberg expressed concern that Lee might believe his own commentary.

"It speaks volumes about Mike Lee's emptiness that he ACTUALLY SEES something on the far right which he can tell is deeply bad (so horrible he feels the need to blame it on others)," wrote Elisberg. "Yet he's unwilling to acknowledge and condemn that this racist hatred in his party exists."

Attorney Steven Brown replied with dark humor, writing, "Mike Lee thinks ICE isn’t patriotic because they wear masks confirmed."

Former CNN White House correspondent John Harwood responded simply, "this United States senator is stark raving mad."