December 27, 2023 12:56 PM UTC

Boebert Features Bigly In FactCheck.org's "Whoppers of 2023"

• 4 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

This year’s roundup of the biggest lies in American politics compiled by FactCheck.org, thicker than ever in 2023 from Hunter Biden to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., features two separate dishonorable mentions for Colorado’s factually antagonistic Rep. Lauren Boebert–the first being the President’s self-confessed failson:

Involvement in Hunter Biden’s business deals. Immediately after Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer, testified behind closed doors to the House oversight committee, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said Archer told the committee “that he heard Hunter Biden speak to Joe Biden more than 20 times about their business deals. Not about anything else, but about the business deals.” Rep. Lauren Boebert likewise said Archer confirmed that Joe Biden “participated in more than 20 of Hunter’s shady business deals.” But when the interview transcript was publicly released several days later, it showed that Greene and Boebert were wrong. [Pols emphasis] What Archer said is that Joe Biden sometimes dropped in via speaker phone or in person while his son was meeting with business associates, but Archer said Joe Biden only exchanged pleasantries and never discussed business.

Republicans have repeatedly overhyped, oversold and misleadingly presented new information uncovered in the House impeachment investigation. But as we have written, so far, Republicans haven’t been able to establish that Joe Biden was involved in his family’s business dealings, that the president directly benefited from those deals or that he ever used his position as vice president to assist the companies.

And for the second lowlight, FactCheck.org cited Boebert repeating a shopworn falsehood about undocumented immigrants that appears to recycle itself every few years:

An old immigration falsehood. Conservative politicians, pundits and outlets resurrected a zombie claim about the federal government allegedly paying thousands of dollars each month to people who immigrate to the U.S. without authorization. In September, Boebert, the Colorado congresswoman, wrote on X, “Biden is giving each illegal family $2,200 per month plus a free plane ticket and free medical care.” Not true.

The claim conflates nonrecurring financial aid given to authorized refugees with the limited assistance available to immigrants who entered the country illegally. It started as a falsehood about refugee assistance in Canada in 2004, before someone changed it to the U.S. We wrote about versions of this claim in 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2019.

Boebert falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants to the U.S. receive thousands of dollars and a “free plane ticket”–ironic now that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is flying migrants to northern cities in addition to busing them–on Friday September 8th, and we might have picked it up then were it not for the events of Sunday, September 10th that have relentlessly gripped the headlines pertaining to Boebert since that day.

As 9NEWS’ Kyle Clark and other journalists have observed, tracking and debunking Boebert’s nonstop barrage of falsehoods and low-budget bigotry is akin to drinking from a proverbial firehose. Much like Boebert’s political mentor Donald Trump, Boebert’s habit of flooding social media with one outrageous statement after another in rapid succession is part of a deliberate strategy to keep her opponents and fact-checkers off balance, constantly struggling to keep up with falsehoods that outpace the facts while gratifying Boebert with the attention she craves.

It’s the dynamic that made Boebert famous, but her 546-vote survival in 2022 makes it all too perilous today.