Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are a disgusting pair of clout-chasers who do offensive things and then gleefully fundraise off of it. They arrived at Tuesday night’s State of the Union determined to make a spectacle of themselves, and appeared throughout the event to be competing for a title, and maybe a cheesy little tiara. If there’s a tiara to be handed out, it would go to Boebert, but not for lack of Greene trying.
To be clear: Boebert and Greene want this attention. They live to own the libs by making asses of themselves, and to rake in the money of the suckers who think it’s great. But if we don’t observe what they’re doing, if we don’t draw a line, the media gets off the hook for normalizing their behavior and the chances that people who don’t pay close attention to politics will understand what today’s Republican Party looks like will shrink even further.
Here’s what the future of the Republican Party looks, and sounds, like. “Greene was heard grumbling through the entire part of Biden's speech about Covid policy before she shouted a remark about women's sports when Biden mentioned new laws targeting transgender Americans and their families,” NBC News reports.
More audibly, when President Joe Biden talked about immigration and the border, Boebert and Greene started chanting “Build the wall,” in clear hopes of leading their fellow Republicans in a major disruption.
Boebert got the most disgusting moment, though. Speaking of service members stationed near burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan, Biden said, “When they came home, many of the world’s fittest and best trained warriors were never the same. Headaches. Numbness. Dizziness. A cancer that would put them in a flag-draped coffin. I know.”
At this, Boebert shouted, “You put them in there, 13 of them.” (For context, 60 U.S. service members died in Afghanistan during Donald Trump’s time in the White House.)
Biden paused briefly as other lawmakers booed and groaned at Boebert’s outburst, before he continued, “One of those soldiers was my son, Major Beau Biden.”
Boebert’s attempt to interject over the 13 soldiers killed in an attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, as the U.S. prepared to withdraw didn’t fit the moment in multiple ways. Biden was talking very specifically about the after-effects of burn pits, a fact that was well established before Boebert shouted. And anyone who has ever listened to Biden speak knew that he was about to mention his late, adored son Beau, making Boebert’s heckling a little too crass even for a few Republicans.
“It's something that I think that there's a place. That's not the place to do that,” Republican Sen. Mike Braun said.
”I don’t think there’s any place for that. It’s inappropriate,” Republican Sen. John Thune said on CBS Wednesday morning. “A State of the Union speech, whether you agree with the president or not, is an opportunity to show the American people the respect that the office deserves.”
But Fred Guttenberg, the father of Parkland shooting victim Jaime Guttenberg, had perhaps the most powerful response:
Guttenberg was handcuffed and detained for hours until Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office intervened. Boebert and Greene get deference as members of Congress, but the difference in the treatment of a grieving father versus that of two attention-seeking trolls is nonetheless striking.
Both Boebert and Greene also tweeted through the speech, which Boebert attended wearing a shawl reading, “Drill Baby Drill.”
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