March 27, 2023 01:56 PM UTC

Lauren Boebert Pays Respect To January 6th Insurrectionists

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• by: Colorado Pols

As NBC News reported, not that you can call it a surprise:

Members of the House Oversight Committee on Friday toured a Washington, D.C., jail where some Jan. 6 defendants are being held and offered contrasting descriptions of conditions inside the facility.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who spearheaded the visit, painted a picture of constitutional violations and overall mistreatment, while her Democratic counterparts said the defendants were being treated fairly with nothing out of the ordinary…

GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who was also on hand for the tour, was seen exchanging a hug with Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, a Jan. 6 rioter who was shot by police as she jumped through a broken window while members of Congress fled.

Earlier this month when Fox News host Tucker Carlson unleashed widely-discredited selective footage attempting to recast of the violence of the January 6th, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol as “mostly peaceful chaos,” Boebert seized on Carlson’s false depiction of events and claimed the hundreds in custody and facing charges stemming from the events that day were wrongly imprisoned. Ironically, the fate of Ashli Babbit, who was killed by Capitol police at the front of a crowd smashing its way into the House chambers, runs directly counter to Carlson’s peaceful narrative–not that logical inconsistencies have ever much troubled Boebert.

Though clearly intended as theater, fortunately a couple of Democrats tagged along on the House Oversight Committee’s field trip to D.C. jail to set the record straight:

Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, a former public defender, described the visit as “political theater,” adding that she “didn’t see anything that was alarming.”

California Rep. Robert Garcia told reporters that the defendants were “being treated very fairly appropriately,” adding that Republicans were “treating these insurrectionists like they’re pseudo celebrities.”

It’s in Boebert’s interest as much as the January 6th rioters facing justice to downplay every part of the events of that day, from the violence to the incitement of that violence from Republican politicians like Donald Trump and Boebert herself. Part of that effort involves manufacturing sympathy for those facing criminal charges, and bemoaning prison conditions they celebrate as “deterrent” when applied to “ordinary” criminals.

The moral of the story is that yes, jail sucks–but so does rioting at the Capitol because you don’t like how the last election went. And as part of a larger strategy to derail the certification of Joe Biden’s victory and keep Trump in office, which Boebert supported and even wielded as a threat in reference to her “constituents outside the building right now,” the rioters were doing something worse than merely rioting.

They were carrying out an insurrection. Right up to the moment of failure, Boebert was part of it.

Every time Boebert wants to remind voters of this, get out of her way and let her.