Minnesota lawmakers' shooting updates: Search intensifies for suspect

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who called the attack a "politically motivated assassination," said state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were shot and killed, and State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were shot multiple times and wounded in in Brooklyn Park and Champlin, two neighboring suburban cities 10 to 20 miles outside Minneapolis.
Authorities said it appeared Boelter targeted pro-choice legislators, based on writings he left behind. They have not yet released those writings, which one elected official referred to as a "manifesto."
Speaking on NBC's Meet the Press, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat who represents Minnesota, said she'd been at a dinner with Hortman just hours previously as elected officials marked the end of the state's legislative session.
She said the community remains anxious, especially given the lengths that the suspect went to in order to enter the homes. In one image released by authorities, Boelter appears to be wearing a full-face mask to disguise his appearance. Klobuchar said the suspect appears to be "off balance" and have "no limits" on his actions.
"We believe he's somewhere in the vicinity and that they are going to find him," Klobuchar said on Meet the Press. "But right now everyone's on edge here because we know this man will kill in a second."
She added: "Clearly this is politically motivated. There clearly was some through-line with abortion because of the groups that were on the list and other things that I've heard that were in this manifesto."
The suspect in the attacks had been seen earlier Saturday wearing a light colored cowboy hat, a dark colored long sleeved collared shirt or coat with a dark bag, police said. The FBI offered a reward of up to $50,000 for information that could lead to an arrest.
David Carlson, 59, told Reuters that he had been sharing a house in Minneapolis with Boelter, who he had known since the fourth grade, for a little more than a year and last saw him on Friday night. Then about 6 a.m. on Saturday, he received a text from Boelter.
"He said that he might be dead soon," said Carlson, who called police.
Boelter is a St. Cloud State University graduate, according to SCSU spokesperson Zach Dwyer. Boelter wrote on his LinkedIn page that he was the CEO of a company called "Red Lion Group" and that he has traveled to Congo and several other countries, but those claims have not been confirmed.
Boelter is also listed on a website of a company called Praetorian Guard Security Services, which lists him as director of security patrols. The website describes him as involved with "security situations" overseas, including Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Praetorian Guard Security Services, a residential armed home security company in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, listed Boelter as director of security patrols for the company, according to its website.
The company offered licensed armed security patrols, uniformed security and event security, with the latter service coming soon.
"We drive the same make and model of vehicles that many police departments use in the U.S.," the website said. "Currently we drive Ford Explorer Utility Vehicles."
In 2019, Walz named Boelter and dozens of others to his Governor's Workforce Development Board, which according to the governor's website assists the governor in "developing, implementing, and modifying the state plan, review of statewide policies and programs, providing recommendations on actions to align and improve the workforce development system and programs," and other state matters.
Hoffman and Hortman are both members of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Hoffman, 60, and his wife, Yvette, have one child and live in Champlin, according to his lawmaker profile. He was first elected in 2012. Hortman and her husband, Mark, have two children and live in Brooklyn Park, according to her profile. She was elected in 2004.
The Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) is a political party exclusive to Minnesota that was formed in 1944 when the Minnesota Democratic Party and the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party merged.
Hortman was Speaker-Emerita of the House of Representatives, which is narrowly controlled by Republicans.
Hortman served her constituents with compassion and grace, Walz said.
"Our state lost a great leader and I lost the dearest of friends, he said. "She woke up every day determined to make this state a better place."
According to authorities, police were called to a shooting around 2 a.m. on June 14 at the Hoffmans' home in Champlin. The Hoffmans had been shot and wounded and were transported to a hospital, where they underwent surgery, officials said. Walz said they are "cautiously optimistic" the Hoffmans will survive.
Authorities said that while police were responding to the Hoffmans' house, officers in neighboring Brooklyn Park, who were helping on the scene, decided to check on Hortman. When they arrived at Hortman's home, they saw what appeared to be a police vehicle with lights on and encountered a man dressed as an officer coming out of the home.
Police exchanged gunfire with the man, who ran back inside and apparently fled out the back door, authorities said.
"Political violence is evil. It cannot be tolerated, and neither can those who condone it or make excuses for it," Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in a statement.
Contributing: Jeanine Santucci, Eduardo Cuevas; Reuters

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The Guardian

an hour ago

• The Guardian

The Minnesota shootings illuminate the character of the Trump era

In the early morning of 14 June, according to authorities, Vance Luther Boelter, disguised as a police officer and wearing body armor and a face mask, drove his black Ford Explorer SUV, equipped with flashing lights, to the home of the Minnesota state senator John Hoffman. There, he shot Hoffman nine times, critically wounding him, and shot his wife eight times as, relatives say, she threw her body over her daughter to shield her. He next drove to the home of the former house speaker Melissa Hortman, forced his way in, and killed her and her husband, officials say. The police arrived and Boelter fled, abandoning his car. In it they allegedly discovered a 'kill list' of dozens of federal and state Democratic officials, mostly from Minnesota but also prominent Democrats in other midwestern states, and the sites of women's healthcare centers and Planned Parenthood donors. He left behind notebooks with detailed descriptions of his target locations. On the lam, Boelter sent a text message to his family: 'Dad went to war last night.' As soon as the earliest reports of the murders were published, with the sketchy information that Boelter had been appointed by Minnesota's governor, Tim Walz, to one of many state boards, on which there are currently more than 342 vacancies, the rightwing swarm began spreading the falsehood that he was Walz's hitman. Mike Cernovich, a notorious conspiracy-monger with a large following on X, tweeted: 'Did Tim Walz have her executed to send a message?' Elon Musk jumped in, writing on X: 'The far left is murderously violent.' The far-right activist Laura Loomer, who occasionally surfaces as an intimate of Donald Trump, tweeted that Boelter and Walz were 'friends' and that Walz should be 'detained' by the FBI. Within hours, Mike Lee, a Republican senator for Utah, used the platform of his office to push the disinformation. Over eerie night-time photos of Boelter in his mask and police outfit standing at Hortman's door seconds before he opened fire, Lee tweeted, first at 9.50am on 15 June: 'This is what happens. When Marxists don't get their way.' At 10.15am, he tweeted, 'Nightmare on Waltz Street,' misspelling Walz's name. Lee expressed no sympathy or shock over the assassinations. He assumed the distance of the online tormentor gave him license. Like the mask-wearer, both were disinhibited by their contrived personas. Anything goes. Lee was doing more than blaming Walz for carrying out a bloody vendetta that conspiracy theorists had conjured. Lee created a cartoon. The killer was enlisted by the evil liberal governor to rub out someone who was in reality one of his closest allies. Like Boelter, Lee felt a compulsion to push himself in. The clamor of the far right pre-empted the emergence of the facts for Lee and served as his incitement. But, of course, Lee is a learned man who knew that what he was doing was malicious. The facts were always irrelevant. He trivialized a tragedy in order to implicate Walz as the villain commissioning the hit. Lee's tone was one of mocking derision to belittle and distort. The killer, Walz and the victims were all tiny, dehumanized figures he arranged to illustrate his tweets. His manipulation was more than a maneuver. It was a revelation of Lee's own mentality and political imagination he believed would be embraced to his advantage. His depraved humor was designed to cement fellow feeling between the jokester and his intended audience. He was playing to the gallery that he knew how to own the libs. He would gain approval and acceptance. In the hothouse in which he operates, he thought his mindless cruelty passed as wit. Soon enough it was reported that Boelter was not a Marxist or for that matter a hitman hired by Marxists. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that Walz 'did not know him' and Walz was on his 'kill list'. Boelter was reportedly an abortion opponent, an evangelical Christian and a registered Republican who attended Trump rallies. Mike Lee is also a man in a mask. He altered his identity, discarding the veneer of a statesman for the Maga mask. Both Boelter and Lee profess to be men of faith, draping themselves in the authority of the law as one allegedly committed murder and the other hooted at it. They have both posed as heroic avengers and truth-tellers as they target victims. While speaking of God, the law and a higher calling, they worship at the shrine of Trump. The alleged assassin and the character assassin embody parallel lives that have intersected at the tragedy under the influence of Trump. One grew up in a traditional middle-class family; the other is a privileged son. Each of their fathers were prominent in their communities – one a high school coach, the other solicitor general of the United States. One graduated from St Cloud State University, the other from Brigham Young and its law school. One appeared susceptible to the latest conspiracy theories; the other knows these are lies but amplifies them anyway for personal aggrandizement to win the approval of the mob and its boss. One is a true believer; the other is a cynical opportunist. One is a 'loser' in the Trump parlance. The other is a winner in the Trump galaxy. Both put their enemies in their crosshairs. One has been booked for homicide; the other is disgraced as a moral reprobate. One is indicted for his alleged crimes; the other has indicted himself. Both spiraled under Trump and both became lost souls, though Boelter would believe that he was found at last. Vance Luther Boelter grew up in the town of Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, one of five siblings, living in a large house, the captain of the high school basketball team, voted 'most courteous' and 'most friendly', according to the Washington Post, and his father acclaimed in the Minnesota State High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. But when he was 17, the mainstream Lutheran young man became a born-again Christian, living in a tent in the local park and shouting sermons to passersby. After he received a degree from a state university, he wound up at the Christ for the Nations Institute, a Texas Bible school that emerged in 1970 from a faith healing group founded by Gordon Lindsay. On the lobby wall of the school is a Lindsay saying: 'Everyone ought to pray at least one violent prayer each day.' Lindsay was also an organizer for the Anglo-Saxon World Federation, an antisemitic organization in the 1930s and 1940s that spread the doctrine of what was called British Israelism, that Anglo-Saxons, not the Jews, were the chosen people of God. The group distributed Henry Ford's antisemitic tract, The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem, as well as Nazi propaganda, and preached that God would punish Franklin D Roosevelt. Lindsay was a close associate of Gerald Winrod, a pro-Nazi demagogue, who ran a group called Defenders of the Faith and was indicted for seditious conspiracy in 1944. After the war, British Israelism was rebranded as Christian Identity, a theocratic doctrine based in part on racist distinctions between superior and inferior races. Lindsay preached 'spiritual war' against the satanic demons of secular culture. Boelter graduated in 1990 from the Christ for the Nations Institute with a degree in practical theology. He wandered as a missionary spreading his gospel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In one sermon, he said: 'There's people, especially in America, they don't know what sex they are. They don't know their sexual orientation. They're confused. The enemy has gotten so far into their mind and their soul.' Boelter claimed he was the CEO of the Red Lion security group. He continued his soul-saving. 'In the Middle East, I went to the West Bank, the Gaza strip, southern Lebanon, and I would give pamphlets to everybody I could,' he said in one sermon. He created a website for a religious group he called Revoformation. He managed a 7-Eleven store, a gas station, and after taking courses in mortuary science worked transporting bodies to a funeral home. He listened to Alex Jones's stream of conspiracy-mongering, Infowars. Boelter created a website for a security firm called Praetorian Guard for which his wife was listed as the CEO and he was the head of security. He bought two cars that he fitted out to look like police cars, stockpiled weapons and uniforms, but had no known business. On 14 June, with his 'kill list' in hand, he sent a message to a longtime friend: 'I made some choices, and you guys don't know anything about this, but I'm going to be gone for a while. May be dead shortly …' Boelter's apparent disguise as a law enforcement officer was an expedient that tricked his victims into opening their doors. Pretending to be a police officer, he traduced the law to impose his idea of order. Christ for the Nations Institute issued a statement renouncing Boelter: 'Christ For The Nations does not believe in, defend or support violence against human beings in any form.' It added that the school 'continues Gordon Lindsay's slogan of encouraging our students to incorporate passion in their prayers as they contend for what God has for them and push back against evil spiritual forces in our world'. Mike Lee took the news of the assassinations as the signal for him to tweet. Lee was born to Mormon royalty in Utah. His father, Rex Lee, was Ronald Reagan's solicitor general, a principled conservative with an independent streak. He resisted pressure to argue cases on behalf of the administration against separation of church and state that would endorse government-sponsored prayer and religious symbols. He resigned in 1985, stating: 'There has been a notion that my job is to press the Administration's policies at every turn and announce true conservative principles through the pages of my briefs. It is not. I'm the solicitor general, not the pamphleteer general.' Rex Lee became the president of Brigham Young University and dean of its law school, both of which his son attended. Lee was elected to the Senate in great part on the strength of the family name. In 2016, Lee endorsed Ted Cruz for the Republican nomination for president. When Trump wrapped up the nomination, Lee refused to endorse him. 'I mean we can get into the fact that he accused my best friend's father of conspiring to kill JFK,' Lee said. 'We can go through the fact that he has made some statements that some have identified correctly as religiously intolerant.' Lee demanded: 'I would like some assurances that he is going to be a vigorous defender of the US constitution. That he is not going to be an autocrat. That he is not going to be an authoritarian.' Lee remained a holdout at the convention until the very end. By 2020, Lee touted Trump as a virtuous figure, comparing him to the self-sacrificing leader in the Book of Mormon. 'To my Mormon friends, my Latter-day Saint friends, think of him as Captain Moroni,' a hero in the Book of Mormon, Lee told a rally, with Trump standing beside him. 'He seeks not power, but to pull it down. He seeks not the praise of the world or the fake news, but he seeks the wellbeing and the peace of the American people.' After Trump lost the 2024 election to Joe Biden, Lee sent John Eastman, a law professor with a scheme to have the vice-president throw out the votes of the electoral college on January 6, to the Trump White House. While Trump focused on the insurrection, Lee strategized with the chief of staff, Mark Meadows – 'trying to figure out a path that I can persuasively defend', Lee texted Meadows. Lee diligently worked to realize the coup plan using fraudulent electors. 'I've been calling state legislators for hours today, and am going to spend hours doing the same tomorrow,' Lee wrote Meadows. The journalist Tim Alberta, writing in the Atlantic, described a conversation Lee recounted with one of his staffers about Trump that went far to explain his motive for switching from a critic of Trump's authoritarianism to a defender. 'Donald Trump walks up to the bar,' said the staffer, 'and he's got a beer bottle in his hand, and he breaks the beer bottle in half over the counter and brandishes it.' Lee said he replied: 'Immediately, a bunch of people in the room get behind him. Because he's being assertive. And odds are lower, as they perceive it, that they'll be hurt if they get behind him.' As Vance Boelter's life unraveled, perhaps he imagined himself risen into a spirit warrior. Mike Lee knows better. To know better, but not to be better, is his peculiar disgrace. He lacks introspection into the source of his hateful behavior, except to offer the excuse that he won't 'be hurt' by Trump. Not to feel any ordinary emotion for the victims of a terrible and unprovoked crime and instead to engage in taunts betrays his father's legacy and the shining figure of Captain Moroni, whom Lee has upheld. His fall from grace is one of the incidents that illuminates not only his but also the true character of the Trump era. Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth. He is a Guardian US columnist and co-host of The Court of History podcast

The Herald Scotland

9 hours ago

• The Herald Scotland

Vance travels to LA to meet Marines deployed against protesters

A brief issued Friday by the vice president's office said he will tour a multi-agency Federal Joint Operations Center and a Federal Mobile Command Center in Los Angeles. Vance, a former Marine, is scheduled to meet with leadership and Marines and deliver brief remarks. Protests against ICE raids erupted in Los Angeles in early June. Nationwide "No Kings" protests against Trump's aggressive expansion of executive power occurred on June 14 in cities across the country A small minority of protesters in Los Angeles violently attacked federal law enforcement, and President Donald Trump responded by deploying the California National Guard, despite objections by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The Democrat-led city is home to millions of immigrants and is a melting pot of Latino, Asian and other cultures. More: Trump using National Guard for deportation work could go into 'uncharted territory' Some 4.2 million people, or nearly a third of the 13 million residents of greater Los Angeles, are foreign-born, according to a Migration Policy Institute analysis of U.S. Census data.

Times

12 hours ago

• Times

Sex addict Anthony Weiner on jail, Trump and Hillary Clinton

As nominative determinism might suggest, Anthony Weiner was perhaps always doomed. A prominent New York congressman and rapidly rising star in the Democratic Party, married to Hillary Clinton's glamorous adviser, Huma Abedin, it all came crashing down — in spectacularly lurid style — in May 2011, when Weiner accidentally posted a sexually explicit photo of his bulging crotch to Twitter. The headlines wrote themselves, with the New York Post gleefully declaring, 'Weiner exposed'. First, though, he denied it, claiming his account had been hacked (the New York Post — 'Weiner: I'll stick it out'), before admitting to having sent similar pictures to numerous women ('Naked truth'), and finally resigning ('Weiner's rise and fall'). Six months later, Abedin gave birth to their son, Jordan. Undeterred, Weiner attempted a return to politics in 2013 in the bold hope of becoming mayor of New York ('Weiner's second coming'), before more reports of sexting emerged — this time under the alias Carlos Danger — and he crashed out in the primary. Through this all, Abedin stood by him. But in 2016 it emerged that he had posted a sexually explicit photo with Jordan, then four, sleeping next to him. And, a few weeks later, that one of those he had sexted was a 15-year-old girl. An FBI probe was launched the following year and he was sentenced to 21 months for transferring obscene material to a minor (he served a little over 15 months in prison). Abedin filed for divorce ('Huma cuts off Weiner') and would later say that Weiner 'didn't just break my heart, he ripped it out and stomped on it over and over again'. In the decade since, Weiner faded from view, before reappearing as an in-house liberal at WABC, a conservative talk radio station. He continued therapy for what he says is a sex addiction. Now, 14 years after first derailing his own promising career, the indefatigable Weiner is staging (another) comeback, running for a seat on New York City Council. Sarah Batchu, one of his opponents, told The New York Times that Trump's victory has allowed other scandal-prone politicians to believe they too could return. ('Trump got elected as a 34-time felon,' Weiner himself said last month.) 'Everyone deserves a second chance, but this guy has had third, fourth and fifth chances,' Batchu said. And, just days before his former wife Abedin marries Alexander Soros, the son of billionaire George Soros and heir to his fortune, 60-year-old Weiner is walking the streets of the East Village in Manhattan, dog and journalist in tow, in his bid for elected office once again. Tabloid-friendly surname aside, this was not supposed to be Weiner's trajectory. At the age of 27, the Brooklyn native became the youngest councillor in New York City's history; then, as an acclaimed, gifted congressman representing New York and known for his straight-talking, sometimes brash modus operandi, a rising star in the Democratic Party and an eligible bachelor in DC circles. In 2007, he began dating Huma Abedin, the glamorous longtime aide to Hillary Clinton. In her 2021 memoir, Both/And, Abedin wrote that after their first kiss her 'head started spinning and didn't stop'. At 32, it was her first serious relationship. They married in 2010, in a ceremony officiated by Bill Clinton, and became a bona fide Washington power couple. • NYC mayor election: Everything you need to know As if his infidelities — from less than a year into their marriage — weren't painful enough, they came with possibly catastrophic professional and political consequences too. Little over a week before the 2016 election, the FBI said it had messages between Abedin and Hillary Clinton, her boss, which they found on Weiner's seized laptop. It was his laptop, in other words, that prompted them to reopen the investigation into Clinton's private email use. Clinton herself credits the probe as a decisive factor in her loss. 'If the election was on October 27,' she said of the day prior to the announcement by James Comey, then the FBI director, that the probe would be reopened, 'I would be your president.' Weiner tells me he thinks 'things are much more complicated' but that it's 'not nothing'. Our dog walk is in the area of the city where Weiner is running for a council seat — a pocket he's never before represented. 'I mean, look, it was a very close race, and she lost by a small number of votes, and so you can point to anything and say that was the difference,' he says in his defence. He never made a 'direct amendment' to Clinton. 'I think I wrote her a letter saying I'd like an opportunity [to apologise] at some point. I don't think we ever spoke about it.' In fact, Weiner is never excessively contrite about any of the scandals I raise as we walk the neighbourhood. He is open, for example, about his belief that he was severely punished and has done his time. 'It was a slow news week and my name is Weiner,' he says at one point. At another: 'I knew that prison was ridiculous. For obscenity, it was pretty ridiculous. I mean, everyone did what they were supposed to. Look, the higher the monkey climbs, the more you can see his ass.' This is how Weiner talks — profane, direct, often curt. But he is not guileless. I ask about his treatment for sex addiction. This is a contested term. Sex addiction is not listed as a formal diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association, while the World Health Organisation recognises compulsive sexual behaviour disorder as a impulse-control disorder, not an addiction. It's perhaps an 'academic conversation', Weiner says. He attends groups once a week and attendance, he says, is growing — 'Rooms are fuller and fuller, more and more people, more and more meetings.' Weiner has drawn connections between his past career and his sexual behaviour. 'You become obsessive about people's affirmation,' he says when I press him. So the obvious question is, isn't there now a high risk of relapse if he returns to politics? 'I don't think this is an example of an alcoholic who wants to be a bartender,' he says. But he does admit the link. 'I would argue that a lot of people in public life are really jazzed up by the affirmation. They get it. I just have to be mindful of it. But it's a reasonable question.' Nonetheless, one might suggest that running for public office would be the very last thing you would do if you were him, so… why? 'The candidates were running this kind of frictionless campaign,' he says of his opponents, 'trying not to offend any of the traditional Democratic constituencies.' But in the end, Weiner thought, 'The only reason not to run is that people would say something mean about me, or would bring up my past, and I didn't think that was a good enough reason.' He raised the idea of running again with Huma and Jordan, now 13, over dinner one night. They were supportive. 'Her take was, look, this is what you're good at.' He reckons the issues associated with running in this new part of the city — and as 'more of a centrist candidate in a very progressive district' — are arguably bigger challenges than the scandals. I ask about Abedin and her imminent wedding to Soros. It is the only few seconds of the interview that I get the sense he weighs his words with much care. 'I don't know what's public and I am not going to comment on it.' He does confirm, when I mention it's due to take place the following weekend, that he isn't going. 'That's the day that polls open here… Yeah, I will not be going. I wish them all the best and she seems very happy and Jordan likes them [all]. So it's all great.' His former wife has moved on — is he dating too? 'That's a big word.' At this point his dog, Billy, finds herself in a harmless brawl in the dog park. This is a welcome distraction — 'She's just being the neighbourhood school mom' — but Weiner returns to our earlier topic and says that, yes, he does go out on dates. I ask if he uses the apps. He doesn't, he says, but he's clearly amused. 'That's kind of a funny idea.' He admits the task of persuading people to trust him is harder than for most. 'Yes, I just had this conversation with someone recently.' With someone he's dating? 'Dating is… It's a lame word…' He trails off before talking about the dog instead. 'You see, she wants to play. She just doesn't quite know how to do it.' At this point Billy begins humping another dog. I suggest this might be too on the nose to include in the interview. 'A little bit,' he concedes. 'You can kind of see the lead for your piece taking shape right now in front of us. I'll write your lead for you: 'You can tell Anthony Weiner's dog has been around him for a while.' ' We wrap up the subject of dating. 'Put it this way: it's fraught. But I don't date much.' Does he stand any chance of winning, though? Weiner thinks his opponents in the upcoming council election are tame. 'In today's world, you've got these other people that I'm running against [who] cut their teeth in a very different time, where it's: how do you get this? How do you not offend this group?' He talks about homelessness. 'You have homeless people who are mentally unwell living on our streets. It's a problem. Everyone recognises [it], every candidate recognises it… This group of politicians that I am up against, they look at the situation and say, all right, who's on this side of the problem? Who's on this side? 'And there are people like the American Civil Liberties Union, who said that a homeless person has a right to be on that street right now in our public space. But most people in this part [of the city], most people who vote, they look at that and say, 'How do we solve that problem?' ' His putative return to politics is not without backlash. Sarah Batchu proposed a bill in February nicknamed the Weiner Act that would ban registered sex offenders — of which Weiner is one — from holding public office. His top opponent is Harvey Epstein, a previously unknown candidate who went viral when Saturday Night Live did a sketch about his name: neither Harvey Weinstein nor Jeffrey Epstein. We leave the dog park and a man walks towards us holding a camera. 'You've got some nerve running for office after sending that dick!' Weiner is unfazed. 'Say, one of these Trump motherf***ers!' Most of what is shouted over the next three minutes is even more unprintable than that. 'You kiss your mom with that mouth?' Weiner asks him, repeatedly shouting, 'Trump motherf***er, go home!' and, 'Another Trump motherf***er!' to those in the park who are, by this point, beginning to turn their heads. The man repeats the usual charges. 'Your fault that Trump got elected in the first place, motherf***er!' he rages. 'They used your sex crime to sink Hillary!' The episode feels reminiscent of the 2016 fly-on-the-wall documentary, Weiner, which introduced me and countless others to Weiner's brusque style while his mayoral campaign (and then marriage too) combusted in real time, its whole extraordinary disintegration captured on camera. This time, a number of young men rally to him. 'Mr Weiner,' one says. 'Don't even talk to him. He's worthless.' These aren't the only men we bump into on our walk who are supportive of Weiner — and they are largely men. But it's difficult to tell if he stands a chance in the council election. 'It's too small a district to really poll,' he says. But he knows his pitch well. 'I just think that my gift is the absence of really giving a shit about whether I might offend someone… And it sounds to people like, oh, I'm doing something different. 'No, what I'm really doing is just practising the only form of politics I know how to do now. Is it going to fit well with this moment? Does it fit well with this electorate? Does it fit well with my scandal? Who the f*** knows. But I don't know any other way to do it. I don't know any other way to do it.'