September 09, 2024 02:27 PM UTC

"Aurora Has Fallen"--Boebert, Gabe Evans Board The Crazy Tren

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• by: Colorado Pols

The election year-addled controversy over the supposed “takeover” of, depending on who you ask, nothing whatsoever, a couple of aging apartment buildings in Aurora, or the entire city of nearly 400,000 souls with the whole state of Colorado not far behind by a gang of Venezuelan migrants who allegedly arrived along with the 75,000 some-odd migrants the Republican governor of Texas Greg Abbott was kind enough to bus to the Denver area last year, took a turn for the even more shamelessly political on Friday as the state’s foremost controversy-chasing carpetbagger Rep. Lauren Boebert traveled to Aurora–which is located in neither Boebert’s current or prospective congressional district–for what she described as a “fact-finding tour.”

As Susan Greene reports for the Aurora Sentinel, facts had only the most incidental of relationships with this exercise:

“There was no fact-finding in the congresswoman’s discussion. It was very, very slanted and staged for political grandstanding,” [Pols emphasis] said Brother Jeff Fard, a longtime metro area advocate for youth and civil rights who showed up to what Boebert billed as a briefing at Aurora city hall, uninvited by the congressperson.

“Let’s just say it left me feeling like I need to take a shower,” he added about a meeting he had hoped would separate fact from fiction in a controversy that has deeply divided local, state and federal officials and thrust Aurora into national notoriety.

Boebert’s briefing amounted largely to a campaign event for Republican John Fabbricatore, a former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office director working to unseat Rep. Jason Crow, a Democrat, from his 6th Congressional District seat.

Colorado Public Radio’s Kiara DeMare reports that the fact-free racist vitriol flowed especially fast and furiously from Boebert’s CO-04 placeholder in Congress, temp-Rep. Greg Lopez, who as readers know has years of experience being the most offensive person in the room:

At the Thursday campaign event, Lopez claimed that Hispanic Americans want the border closed.

“It is time to shut these borders down. It’s time to make sure that we get these wild dogs … I call them wild dogs because look at what they do. They go around, they create havoc, and if we allow them to take over a certain area, they’re going to breed and they’re going to spread,” [Pols emphasis] he told the crowd.

According to a study by Stanford University, immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than citizens born in the U.S. Other research has found no connection between the number of undocumented residents in a community and its crime rates.

In a previous era, calling any other human being a “wild dog” we need to “get” before they “breed” would be career-ending Iowa ex-Rep. Steve King style, but in a Republican town hall in Aurora, Colorado in 2024 it’s apparently par for the course. We appreciate CPR correcting the record on crimes committed by immigrants in real time.

But when it comes to firing off false information, Boebert wasn’t going to be outdone by her placeholder:

NEW: Rep Lauren Boebert (R-CO) says it's "confirmed" that a Venezuelan gang is involved in child sexual abuse in Aurora. That claim first surfaced two days ago as an anonymous, third-hand account. When we asked Boebert for her evidence, she alleged a media cover-up. #copolitics pic.twitter.com/SVl7IidIYo

— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) September 7, 2024

It’s the classic impenetrable closed loop of conspiracist thinking: there’s no such thing as false information, the press just hasn’t found the horrible truth yet–or worse yet, they’re covering it up! It’s a form of reasoning Boebert may have picked up from her QAnon-curious mom, as it’s very helpful in believing unfounded rumors without question. There’s no contending with this mindset, it’s simply why people who think this way have been traditionally relegated to the irrelevant fringe of every debate. Before her election to Congress, that was Lauren Boebert in a nutshell.

And who else do we find out there on the blinkered fringes of the debate over the alleged “takeover” of Aurora? Republican CO-08 candidate Gabe Evans, jumping with both feet on board what could be the Colorado political lie of the year:

Like Boebert, Gabe Evans is not running to represent Aurora in Congress, but he should be at least somewhat more familiar with the area since he lives relatively close by. Either way, running in Colorado’s most politically competitive congressional district, Evans should be more careful with his rhetoric, since even if he really believes that “Aurora has fallen,” many of his would-be constituents who travel there regularly know that isn’t true by any rational measure. Fellow Republican and Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman surely can’t be happy with Evans telling the world that his city “has fallen,” any more than he is with Donald Trump promising that if he doesn’t win Colorado Gov. Jared Polis will be forced to flee the state.

Voters expect this kind of nonsense from Lauren Boebert, like they expect it from Trump.

That Gabe Evans trafficks in the same outrageous false information could surprise them.