July 22, 2024 03:06 PM UTC

Lauren Boebert Lets Her Conspiracy Freak Flag Fly

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• by: Colorado Pols

We wrote last week about Republican state Rep. Scott Bottoms, who the morning after the assassination attempt against ex-President Donald Trump asserted without evidence to his congregation at the Church at Briargate in Colorado Springs that the FBI was involved in the incident in something other than a protective capacity. Since the July 13th shooting in Bulter, Pennsylvania that killed one person and injured three more including lightly wounding the former President, there has been no evidence to suggest that the 20-year-old gunman was part of any kind of conspiracy.

But as anyone who has watched the news over the past nine days can tell you, the irresponsible speculation about the attempt on Trump’s life neither began nor ended with Scott Bottoms–and that includes here in Colorado, where Rep. Lauren Boebert put her best “QAnon” sleuthing skills to work and came up with the answer on the day of the shooting:

“Joe Biden is responsible for the shooting.”

By the next day, Boebert had calmed down enough to refine her alarming j’accusation, which needless to say if true would be monumental news:

A couple of days after, as readers know, Boebert filed legislation to zero out the salary of the Director of the Secret Service, a post currently held by Kimberly Cheatle though presumably they’ll need to pay whoever takes the job next. Today, Director Cheatle appeared before the House Oversight Committee where she was unsparingly grilled by both sides, and ranking Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin also called for Cheatle to resign over the lapses in security that allowed the shooter to successfully target ex-President Trump.

But there’s a big difference between Raskin’s call for Cheatle to resign and Boebert’s. Raskin simply says that Cheatle has “lost the confidence of Congress.”

Boebert thinks that Cheatle, and by extension the Biden administration, was in on the assassination attempt. These two justifications for asking for Cheatle to resign are not created equal, and Boebert’s unhinged speculation is exactly what the country does not need right in a moment of legitimate uncertainty. To suggest that the Biden administration could have intentionally engineered this chain of events is as outlandish as claiming that Trump would allow a 20-year-old kid to shoot within an inch of his head in a sympathy ploy of his own. Neither of these are things responsible people should be suggesting.

What is needed today as in the aftermath of every national traumatic even is clear-headedness and accountability, which may indeed require the resignation of the Director of the Secret Service. But under no circumstances should that process be driven by unfounded allegations of a conspiracy kill the President’s political opponents–which is what Boebert has trafficked in since the day of the shooting.

Yes, the Supreme Court just ruled that a President can actually maybe do just that and Boebert cheered the ruling. But then there would be no need for the pretext of a lone gunman.