Footage has surfaced showing Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivett (D-Mich.), who was a Michigan State Senator at the time, seemingly minimizing the Michigan mass shooting during a state Senate hearing, while several victims were still in the hospital.
The video clip, provided exclusively to Breitbart News, features McDonald-Rivet speaking with Democratic Senator Sylvia Santana during an appropriations subcommittee meeting.
“What I mean is, he came in… and was standing at the back. [a colleague] asked, ‘Is this man the shooter? I was thinking, ‘Oh, that’s it,’” McDonald-Rivet recounted.
“[Who] was that?” Santana questioned.
“That engineer!” McDonald-Rivet replied with a laugh.
At the point when McDonald-Rivet made her remarks, four of the five surviving victims were still hospitalized.
The same day, she also heard testimonies from students and families impacted by the shooting, later calling for “compassion” in light of the tragedy.
This conversation took place less than three weeks after the incident at Michigan State University in February 2023, where a 43-year-old gunman opened fire in a university building and student union, resulting in the deaths of three students and five others injured, before taking his own life while being confronted by police a few miles away.
The Republican National Committee (RNC), via spokesperson Hunter Lovell, criticized McDonald-Rivett’s comments, calling them “unfathomable” for anyone holding public office. He stated that she should apologize to the families of the deceased and those injured, whose lives would be forever altered.
At the time this report was published, McDonald-Rivett’s office had not responded to inquiries for comment.
McDonald-Rivett represents Michigan’s 8th Congressional District, an R+1 seat. In 2024, former President Donald Trump led by approximately two percentage points in this district, which is viewed by Republicans as a crucial target for the upcoming 2026 midterms.
Records from the Federal Election Commission, as cited by Breitbart News, indicated that the campaign committee of Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) made a $1,000 donation to McDonald-Rivett just prior to Frost’s trip to El Salvador to advocate for the reinstatement of Kilmer Abrego Garcia.
