March 02, 2023 10:20 AM UTC

Why Jamie Raskin's Dismantlement of Lauren Boebert Matters

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• by: Colorado Pols

Some of the most-viewed clips of video from this week in Congress feature a running exchange between Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin and Colorado’s maven of misinformation Rep. Lauren Boebert, beginning when Boebert seized on the “low confidence” assessment by the Energy Department that the COVID-19 pandemic originated in a Chinese lab leak, and proceeded to fictionalize the response by former President Donald Trump to both the pandemic and Chinese leadership. Newsweek’s Ewan Palmer:

In a series of videos that have gained millions of views on Twitter, Raskin used his time during a meeting of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which both lawmakers are part of, as well as the House floor on Tuesday to launch a series of attacks against Boebert…

Boebert, the indefatigable Donald Trump stan, tried to make the case that Trump had blamed the Chinese for the virus’ still-unknown origin from the beginning. But Rep. Raskin wasn’t having Boebert’s historical revisionism:

Raskin said there are two facts that she “should be alerted to” before trying to defend Trump with regards to how COVID broke out.

“One is that Donald Trump, on more than 20 different occasions defended the performance of Chinese government and specifically President Xi in terms of his treatment of COVID-19 and said he was doing a wonderful job and a great job and they were working closely and they were constantly in touch,” Raskin said. [Pols emphasis]

“So if there’s a problem with the Chinese government unleashing the virus—which has not been proven anywhere, but it certainly could be true—You would have to pin that on your favorite President Donald Trump, not on Joe Biden.”

“The second thing is President Trump’s own special adviser on COVID-19, Deborah Birx, said that the lethal recklessness of Donald Trump’s policies about COVID-19 cost Americans hundreds of thousands of lives.

During the State of the Union address last month, Rep. Boebert Tweeted in all caps “YOU CLOSED THEM” in response to Biden mentioning the closure of schools during the pandemic. The problem was of course that Trump was President when schools were ordered closed during the early vaccineless phase of the pandemic, and it was state officials who made those decisions in any event. Similarly, to praise Trump for blaming China for the pandemic ignores the long period in which he not only refused to do so but extolled Chinese authorities for their cooperation. Only later on the campaign trail did Trump begin to refer to COVID-19 as the “China virus” as a way of shirking blame for his own administration’s mishandling of the crisis.

After Raskin’s effortless dunking on Boebert in committee, the action moved to the House floor the next day, where Raskin schooled Boebert on her impish insistence on dropping the -ic from “Democratic,” and embraced Boebert’s expressed preference to be called “Ultra MAGA” over “MAGA extremist” with a smile–since either work fine for Democratic branding purposes. With Boebert’s higher profile this session resulting from her plum committee assignments–and above all, vulnerability that no one could count on until Boebert almost lost her seat last year–we expect to see Democrats crank up the pressure, publicly challenging Boebert’s easily-disproven falsehoods and forcing her to squirm under the bright lights. That’s the best way to turn Boebert’s higher profile within the GOP caucus into a liability ahead of her next election.

At some point, Boebert might even have to admit who was in charge when all that bad stuff happened.