May 19, 2023 10:38 AM UTC

"Hell No Beto Mom" No Longer Tolerates Dissent

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: For more on the subject of yesterday’s GOP press conference, unfounded conspiracy theories about the World Health Organization, Erik Maulbetsch of the Colorado Times Recorder has the story.

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The Daily Beast reports today on a wild scene yesterday afternoon outside the U.S. Capitol, where a heckler at a Republican news conference featuring Rep. Lauren Boebert in opposition to the World Health Organization was physically shoved away from the event by fellow Republican Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana–all of which was caught on video from start to finish:

A news conference hosted by conservative legislators outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday was interrupted by a blue-shirted protester, who buzzed around the podium with his phone out, peppering lawmakers like Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) with questions…

During this initial encounter, Rep. Higgins got very up close and personal with the heckler, nonetheless offering to answer his questions after the event had concluded.

But when the protester swooped back in as Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) was speaking, he barely had time to get out his question—about whether her recent divorce was linked to her restaurant’s tainted pork sliders [Pols emphasis]—before Higgins was back.

In video captured both by the protester, Jake Burdett, and other people at the scene, Higgins can be heard saying, “Uh-uh. Uh-uh. No. You’re out. You’re out.” He then puts his hands on Burdett and starts physically propelling him backwards, bundling him away from the event.

“Aren’t you a congressperson, touching me?” Burdett asks. “Get off me! You’re hurting me!”

Opinions of the video you can watch above of the incident vary with respect to the appropriateness of the “Bernie Bro” activist interrupting the press conference to interject rather obviously trolling questions just prior to the events shown. But short of the protester committing an assault of his own, which no one has accused him of, getting violently bum-rushed by a sitting member of Congress is a wildly inappropriate response to a situation that could and should have been handled by Capitol Police or some other security. The protester is reportedly weighing his legal options.

For Rep. Boebert, the complicating factor with this incident is how her own career in politics launched back in 2019: when Boebert confronted then-presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke over O’Rourke’s vow to ban assault weapons at a town hall event in Aurora. For the first few months of Boebert’s rise to prominence, she was better known as the “Hell No Beto Mom” than by her actual name.

Can you imagine the hue and cry that would have ensued if Boebert had been “escorted” out of Beto’s event with a tiny fraction of the force Rep. Higgins used on Boebert’s heckler yesterday?

It’s an age-old story. Everything changed for Boebert when she went behind the podium.