Boebert Watch: Bullet Points and Pointed Bullying

What does U.S. Representative Lauren Boebert have in common with obnoxious kids on the internet? Honestly, too many things to list here — and tragically, one of them is a fundamental ignorance as to how Congress works. Her latest teen-type tactic is a new way to bully people with whom she disagrees: Boebert has started her own weekly show on YouTube, where her invented invective won’t be threatened by anything approaching the truth.

Bullying is nothing new for Lauren Boebert; it’s more or less her thing, which she apparently confuses for leadership. Her recent announcement brags about her latest target: any sort of treatment for young people suffering from gender dysphoria. She’s piggybacking a companion bill on a proposal by Senator Mike Lee of Utah, and while neither measure is expected to go anywhere, as always, it’s the cruelty that’s the point. Lee, by the way, is perhaps best known for contracting COVID from the Rose Garden superspreader event in honor of Handmaiden and Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and he also made some waves back in 2020 when he proclaimed that here in America, “We’re not a democracy,” adding his goals for the country: “liberty, peace, and prospefity.” So right there, he’s already speaking Boebert’s language.

Now Boebert has a bully pulpit on YouTube, and it’s like a weird celebration of the worst aspects of her own image. The lead-in to the first episode lasts 25 seconds that feel more like minutes, with bad-film-school shots of Washington, D.C., and more unearned Boebert strutting around. Weirdest of all is that it actually includes a few seconds of her fluffing her hair. Maybe it’s a Legally Blonde sort of move — you know, the whole “I’m pretty and so you underestimate me” sort of thing? But then again, Reese Witherspoon’s character in that film was able to get into Harvard Law School, and a battle of intellect is pretty much the only fight to which Lauren Boebert comes unarmed.

Case in point: Just last week, Boebert tried to troll environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who’d posted a video of the congresswoman protesting the empty political rhetoric at the Glasgow, Scotland, climate change conference by referring to it as “blah blah blah” and “…whatever the fuck they’re doing inside there.” Boebert responded by reposting Thunberg’s video and adapting a meme, in true teen-girl fashion: “Tell me you have absolutely no idea why you’re protesting without telling me you have absolutely no idea why you’re protesting.” The condescension was as striking as it was baffling; Boebert was attacking a woman nearly half her age by accusing her of not understanding the issues…an accusation born of Boebert not understanding the issues.
It was yet another demonstration of classless incompetence from the gun fetishist from CD3, one of the loudest voices in a party that no longer seems to care about class or competence. Boebert revels in the dysfunction that the far right has brought to Washington, stirring up as much trouble as she can. Like last week, when she joined Matt Gaetz — a bizarre and unwise move in and of itself, considering the serious charges Gaetz is facing — in threatening to blow up the metal detectors in the U.S. House of Representatives. These are not small issues; they’ve just come to seem small next to the mountain of insane bullshit that’s also out there.

Speaking of mountains of insane bullshit, back to Lauren Boebert’s Bullet Points. The very first issue Boebert takes up in her web series — wait, that should be “makes up” — labels President Joe Biden a traitor. Because reasons, none of which involve anything approaching traitorous behavior. But kudos on that bold move coming from someone who posted “Today is 1776” the morning of the domestic terrorism attack on the Capitol and who is still defending the actual treachery committed that day.

More recently, Boebert made the news for a ridiculous attack on Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, blaming his paternity leave for the supply-chain issues currently troubling the retail sector. And in doing so, of course she went homophobic, making a bad joke about him “trying to figure out how to chestfeed.”

And the head-shaking didn’t stop there. “I’m a mother of four,” Boebert said. “I delivered one of my children in the front seat of my truck because as a mom of four, we got things to do.” Forgetting for a moment that this is a story that’s never been told before from a woman who’s already been caught in several outright lies about her personal history, from her mom’s politics to her own failing restaurant, the details of this delivery seem dubious. But even if it happened, the explanation that she did it for the sake of time management is, to put it kindly, not indicative of good decision-making skills. Or to put it less kindly: It is stupid. It is a stupid point to make, and probably a stupid lie to tell.

Want more stupid? Boebert has your back. She proceeds with the attack on Buttigieg — which is really an attack on parental leave. As in: more time for parents with their babies. Aren’t the “things to do” that she mentions, you know, taking care of her kids? And then she ends her segment with a mystifying self-own criticizing “Mayor Pete” because he took time to make a video…which she’s mentioning in a video that she took time out of her work schedule to make.
You might ask why Boebert’s staff doesn’t step in when the congresswoman is making basic errors in both logic and fact, badly mimicking late-night TV hosts who know how to do it better and have comedy writers on staff who are actually funny. But when you consider that these staffers are the same people who recently filed with the Federal Election Commission listing Boebert as a candidate for Congress in Utah…the answer becomes evident.

In the end, these videos will still appeal to Boebert’s base because her fans have been trained to believe the source and not the truth, to value party over country. Bullying sells in our current political era. Maybe this is just Boebert hedging her bets for her future, trying out for a post-political career in right-wing talk.

But for now, it’s nothing but style over substance for CD3.