The House floor showdown between Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene is just the tip of the iceberg

Business Insider

These are some of Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert's most memorable controversies, including her feud with Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Transcript

00:00 Lauren Boebert first made headlines when she confronted Beto O'Rourke in 2019

00:05 at an event where he was talking about banning assault weapons.

00:09 She took the mic and said, "You have said, 'Hell yes, we're going to ban assault weapons.'

00:13 I'm here to tell you, 'Hell no, you're not.'"

00:15 And that video went viral and just sparked a lot of public interest in her.

00:20 And then when she ran for Congress in 2020, in the Republican primary,

00:25 she defeated a five-term incumbent.

00:27 My name is Talia Lakritz, and I'm a lifestyle correspondent at Insider.

00:31 I'm Congresswoman Lauren Boebert.

00:33 She is a far-right MAGA Republican elected in 2020

00:37 and re-elected by a pretty narrow margin in 2022.

00:41 There are a few reasons why Boebert's name has been in headlines lately,

00:45 one of which is sort of an ongoing feud with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene

00:49 that reached a boiling point.

00:51 Both Boebert and Greene were elected at the same time,

00:54 both vocal Trump supporters who have sort of represented

00:57 this right-wing faction of the Republican Party.

01:00 And they used to be a lot more in step.

01:02 They were allies and friends.

01:04 At the 2022 State of the Union address,

01:06 they both heckled President Joe Biden together.

01:09 But in recent months, their relationship has had these tensions.

01:14 Boebert has criticized Greene over her promotion of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

01:19 Greene hit back on Twitter, talking about Boebert's narrow re-election margin.

01:24 And things sort of came to a head when they argued in the women's bathroom

01:28 around the time where Republicans were trying to elect a Speaker of the House,

01:32 where Greene accused Boebert of accepting Kevin McCarthy's money for her re-election bid,

01:37 but then not actually backing him for the House Speaker race.

01:41 So all of this was sort of coming to a head.

01:44 And then it all blew up on the House floor over this argument

01:48 about the dueling Biden impeachment resolutions.

01:52 Boebert introduced her own resolution to impeach President Biden.

01:56 And stay tuned as I prepare to take steps available to me

02:00 as a United States Congresswoman to bring real leadership back to America.

02:05 And this upset Greene because she had introduced her own resolution to impeach Biden in 2021,

02:11 and she had asked Boebert to co-sponsor hers.

02:13 Boebert denies this and says that she never even saw Greene's resolution.

02:18 So they got into a heated argument on the House floor,

02:22 and that resulted in Greene calling Boebert an expletive.

02:26 They then sort of went on cable news shows and talked about the argument that they'd had.

02:33 Greene confirmed that she had called Boebert an expletive

02:35 and said that she would not be reconciling with Boebert.

02:39 Boebert said that Marjorie Taylor Greene is not my enemy,

02:42 Joe Biden and the Republicans are my enemies, I didn't come here to get into spats.

02:47 Part of why Lauren Boebert has become such a well-known name in the Republican Party

02:52 is because of this firebrand MAGA Republican persona that she has.

02:58 President Donald Trump has a servant's heart, and he puts the American people first.

03:06 And there have been a litany of controversial stances and statements from her years in Congress.

03:12 One that stands out is that in 2021, she called Representative Ilhan Omar

03:16 a member of the Jihad squad. Omar is a Muslim American.

03:20 And Boebert also said that she felt safe around Omar

03:24 as long as she wasn't wearing a backpack around her, so implying that she was a terrorist.

03:29 Boebert later apologized to the Muslim community for her comments,

03:32 but there definitely remains some bad blood between the two of them.

03:36 And then in June 2022, just days after Roe v. Wade was overturned,

03:41 Boebert told a crowd at a Christian community center that she's, quote,

03:44 "tired of this separation of church and state junk" and said that churches should direct the government.

03:50 Lauren Boebert believes that life begins at conception and supports criminalizing abortion.

03:55 And she also does not believe in allowing exceptions for rape,

03:59 incest, or the health of the person giving birth.

04:04 She is strongly pro-gun. Her campaign has been endorsed by the NRA.

04:09 She's the co-chair of the Second Amendment Caucus.

04:11 And after school shootings, she has said things like,

04:14 "After 9/11, we didn't ban planes" when people have called for stricter gun laws.

04:19 And she's also called gun-free zones the most dangerous places in the country.

04:23 Lauren Boebert has four children.

04:25 Her oldest, Tyler, is 18 years old, and he just fathered a baby with his girlfriend,

04:31 which makes Boebert a 36-year-old grandmother.

04:34 And Boebert was actually a teen mom herself.

04:36 When she was 18, she gave birth to Tyler and dropped out of high school,

04:40 began working at fast food restaurants.

04:42 And then she eventually opened her own restaurant, Shooter's Grill,

04:45 where the waitstaff carried firearms openly.

04:49 Lauren Boebert has been married to Jason Boebert for a little under 20 years

04:53 and recently announced that she is filing for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences.

04:58 And from very early on in their relationship, there were indicators that there were issues.

05:02 For example, in 2004, even before they were married,

05:05 Jason Boebert was arrested and charged with public indecency and lewd exposure.

05:09 After he exposed himself in a bowling alley.

05:12 Boebert in her memoir writes about the incident, saying that it was a misunderstanding,

05:16 that Jason just pretended to unzip his pants, but Jason did end up serving jail time for this incident.

05:22 And then more recently, in December 2021,

05:25 one of the Boebert's teenage sons called 911 to report that his father was throwing him around the house.

05:31 And then Boebert said that nothing physical happened, denied these allegations.

05:36 So there have been several incidents that indicated maybe things weren't going so well at home.

05:41 And then in May, Boebert confirmed that she had in fact filed for divorce.

05:45 What we're seeing in the Republican Party right now is this power struggle between MAGA,

05:50 Trump loyalist Republicans and Republicans who are maybe looking for some new leadership.

05:56 And in this power struggle, people like Lauren Boebert are seizing the moment to push their own agendas.

06:02 For example, the resolution that she pushed to impeach President Biden,

06:07 even though it largely did not have support from the rest of the Republican Party,

06:11 it was something that she pushed ahead and it ended up being called to a vote.

06:16 Lauren Boebert is a pretty well-known conservative politician at this point,

06:21 but her seat is considered relatively vulnerable.

06:24 She won her re-election campaign in the midterms by a very small margin.

06:29 And a lot of other Trump-endorsed candidates did not win their midterm elections.

06:33 So I think it's important to watch Lauren Boebert and people like her in Congress

06:37 to see how this will ultimately shake out.

06:39 [MUSIC]

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