QANON3 404

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zombied qanon3 11 22

crazy pending or just xian?

dunno what won tag is, zombie? vs beaten?

see trumpista base

somewhat neglected b/c an targets, plus predictable? lone Q? MTG?

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https://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/lauren-boebert

0 0%

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/gop-defectors-lauren-boebert-seat/

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denver paper toxic

https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/lauren-boebert-2658573650/

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rww 10 22

Josh Kovensky @ Talking Points Memo: Bannon Sentenced To Four Months In Prison For Contempt Of Congress.
Luke Broadwater and Michael S. Schmidt @ The New York Times: Jan. 6 Panel Issues Subpoena to Trump, Setting Up Legal Battle Over Testimony.
Media Matters: Tucker Carlson says the only proof there isn’t election fraud in Arizona is if the Republican wins.
Emily Hofstaedter @ Mother Jones: Christian Nationalists Are Closer Than You Think to Running America.
Sky Palma @ Raw Story: Speaker at rally featuring Eric Trump delivers wild rant about ‘angel of death’ killing Democrats and Supreme Court’s chief justice
Alex Griffing @ Mediaite: Lauren Boebert Tells GOP Tennessee Event ‘We Are In The Last of The Last Days’ Before the ‘Second Coming of Jesus.’
Matthew Kassel @ Jewish Insider: Blake Masters’ campaign has had a far-right Christian nationalist on its payroll for months.
Oliver Darcy @ CNN: Newsmax bans Lara Logan after QAnon-style rant, condemns her words in ‘the strongest terms’.
Philip Bump @ The Washington Post: Florida’s surgeon general makes the conspiracy-theory podcast rounds.

Tags: Blake Masters Donald Trump Joseph Ladapo Lara Logan Lauren BoebertSteve Bannon Tucker Carlson Round-Up Newsmax

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an 10 22

A former Republican rival to Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) has penned a new op-ed while endorsing the lawmaker's current Democratic rival.

In an op-ed published by the Montrose Daily Press, state Sen. Don Coram (R-Colo.) —who challenged Boebert in the state's primary election— offered a blistering assessment of the far-right lawmaker.

According to Coram, the Colorado lawmaker “spends her time jet-setting around the country promoting herself and extreme rhetoric that only divides this country further,” wrote Coram. “It’s disgraceful and we should expect more from our United States representative.”

Coram also urged voters to throw their support behind former Aspen City Councilmember Adam Frisch in November's race which is expected to be a relatively close election.

While he did admit that their political preferences differ from Frisch's, he still believes he is the better candidate. “Naturally, Adam and I differ on various policies and issues," he wrote. "However, I know that he is the type of person who will come to the table and have a conversation. That is what we should expect from our representative.

Noting some of the aspiring lawmaker's strong attributes, Coram lauded Frisch personally and professionally. “I believe Adam Frisch is a good man," he wrote.

"I have had the opportunity to visit with him and get to know him better over the last few months, I know him to be decent, honest, and persistent," he added. "He has demonstrated that he is more interested in representing the district than being a celebrity. That’s important."

Coram also included a clear message to voters. "Let’s elect someone who cares about representing the majority of people in the middle that are fed up with extreme partisanship and juvenile antics," he wrote.

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tom b raw 8 22

Law enforcement officials in Garfield County, Colorado, have released audio recordings of 911 calls they received from neighbors of Rep Lauren Boebert (R-CO), complaining her kids were speeding on the street, her husband was driving drunk and he drove over their mailbox and was trying to start a fight.

According to the report from the Denver Post, the altercation happened on Aug 4, and led to a spate of calls requesting deputies respond.

As the Post's Conrad Swanson wrote, "Garfield County Sheriff’s deputies decided to let neighbors of U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert settle a dispute between themselves and the congresswoman’s husband after he reportedly threatened them and destroyed their mailbox. But 911 calls from the incident, obtained by The Denver Post, show just how upset and nervous the neighbors were over their run-in with Boebert’s husband, Jayson Boebert."

According to the report, a neighbor asked one of Boebert's sons to stop speeding down the street in a dune buggy, which set off a dispute that then escalated.

One caller to 911 stated, "He's going like 50 miles an hour and this is a residential lane, there's kids. We tried to stop him, and he'd just freakin' cuss at us and just left."

Another complained about Boebert's husband and the GOP lawmaker, telling the dispatcher, "I’m sure he’s loaded to the hilt. Do you know who his wife is? Lauren Boebert. She’s loaded. They all have guns. He just got chest to chest, face to face, looking to fight.”

The report adds, "Jayson Boebert did not respond to a message seeking comment, nor did the second neighbor. However, over the phone, the second neighbor told the 911 dispatcher that Jayson Boebert had driven to their house with his son 'trying to claim that someone took a swing at his kid and nobody did,'" adding,"He calls Jayson Boebert 'dumb as a post' and 'irrational,' then expresses concern about the being threatened and more."

You can read more here and listen to the audio below or at this link:

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2x?

https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/lauren-boebert-facebook-silencing-conservatives/

https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/lauren-boebert-it-sounds-interesting/ bible massacre?

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/lauren-boebert-facebook-silencing-conservatives/

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// hejab protests? rick wilson gop strat

https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/lauren-boebert-go-to-iran/

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aha/hmmn paranoid style earth2 has just taken over gop trumpista qanon and/or boebert mirror rubber/glue mock BLM defund police (never really a thing) and/or just kneejerk gubmint (recall // deep state intel) but FBI storied literally; they are running out of allies/institution woke corps, DoD etc; just fundraising clicks?

ppl/press pundits been thinking wrong we wd hit trump tip pt, never comes? until 5 min ago his endorsement is kingmaker eg az townsend?

an 8 22

...Others have attempted to defend the former president. Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said, “You can say nuclear weapons, but there are things that are highly, highly classified, there are things that are not extremely classified."

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is now selling merchandise on her website in support of a call to "defund the FBI" while Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) tweeted, "I will support a complete dismantling and elimination of the democrat brown shirts known as the FBI."

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david badass

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) refused to end her remarks attacking popular Democratic legislation known as the Inflation Reduction Act, and after being repeatedly warned – four times – she was over time as she ranted and delivered falsehoods on the House floor her microphone was finally cut.

Congresswoman Boebert, part of the far-right fringe that has taken over the Republican Party, yelled and wagged her finger as she spread misinformation.

In an ironic twist the pro-gun activist and former owner of Shooters Grill angrily – and falsely – claimed the bill mandates the hiring of 87,000 armed IRS agents.

“What are we doing here? What are we passing this so-called Inflation Reduction Act if inflation is at zero percent?” she asked.

Inflation in fact for the month of July was flat, coming in at zero percent, which brought the annual inflation rate down from 9.1% to 8.5%.

“Well in fact it’s the inflation enhancement act,” Boebert, a spreader of conspiracy theories falsely argued, calling it “just another con game by the Democrats,” which also is false.

She then went on to claim the IRS would have more “armed agents” than the Defense Dept.

After being warned four times she had gone over time her mic was cut, but she was subsequently granted additional time.

The Colorado Congresswoman, a pro-gun extremist, went on to lie that the Inflation Reduction Act “hires 87,000 IRS agents and they are armed and the job description tells them that they need to be required to carry a firearm and expect to use deadly force if necessary,” she shouted, calling it “armed robbery.”

The bill will enable the IRS to hire new employees, but nowhere near 87,000. Only a tiny fraction, about 300, would be armed, and not for nefarious purposes like “armed robbery.”

“Though the job is really about sniffing out income and accounting irregularities to build legal cases,” CBS News reports, “one of the potential duties is ‘conduct[ing] or participat[ing] in surveillance, armed escorts, dignitary protection, undercover operations, execution of search and arrest warrants, seizures, etc.,’ thejob listingstates.”

Boebert began by calling “supporters of this legislation insane,” falsely implied the Inflation Reduction Act increases taxes on ordinary middle-class Americans, while mocking “Green New Deal initiatives.”

Seconds after her “armed robbery” remarks Boebert again ran into overtime. Her mic was cut after the second warning.

Kentucky Democratic Congressman John Yarmuth, who spoke immediately after her, blasted the Colorado Congresswoman.

Watch below or at this link:

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more mimicry than threat? tho gotta consider how wackos will take it

Dozens of people reported Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) to the FBI after she included the words "terminate this Presidency" in a message on Twitter.

"We need to terminate this Presidency," she wrote, adding, "End quote. Repeat the line."

:{:{The "terminate" quote likely referred to remarks made by President Joe Biden last week in which he misspoke while talking about reproductive rights.}:

"Ten years old and she was forced to travel out of the state to Indiana," Biden said, "to seek to terminate the presidency and maybe save her life."

Boebert's intentions were unclear because she did not correctly quote the president. Many commenters forwarded her tweet to the FBI, the Secret Service and the Justice Department.

Read some of the reports below.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/alan-dershowitz-boebert/

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/lauren-boebert-laughter-happy-transition/

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/lauren-boebert-relentlessly-mocked-after-sharing-stupid-take-on-copenhagen-mall-shooting/

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/lauren-boeberts-gun-obsessed-restaurant-is-facing-an-uncertain-future-report/

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/colorado-officials-probe-lauren-boebert/

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an 6 22

although Colorado is far from a red state at this point, it has its Republican-leaning districts — and one of Colorado’s most infamous GOP politicians is Rep. Lauren Boebert. Colorado has a Democratic governor (Jared Polis) and two Democratic U.S. senators (John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet), and Democrats have majorities in both the Colorado State Senate and the Colorado House of Representatives.

But Boebert, a far-right MAGA extremist, conspiracy theorist and QAnon supporter along the lines of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Rep. Paul Gosar or Arizona, has been a consistent source of embarrassment to Colorado — and journalist Nick Bowlin, in an article published by The Guardian guk on June 27, describes efforts by both Democrats and non-MAGA Republicans to get her voted out of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms.

Bowlin explains, “Boebert’s extreme right-wing stances range from absolute opposition to gun control to questioning the effectiveness of vaccines and the outcome of the 2020 presidential elections. All are conveyed by a social media persona fine-tuned to inflame the culture wars…. Along with Marjorie Taylor Greene, Josh Hawley, J.D. Vance and others, she is among a vanguard of younger, stridently conservative politicians following former President Donald Trump’s path to prominence.”

Boebert is running for a second term in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms.

But her critics, Bowlin explains, are hoping to prevent her from being reelected. And they have two opportunities to defeat her: a GOP primary this Tuesday, June 28, and the general election — both of which are longshots.

“Colorado holds what are known as open primaries,” Bowlin notes. “This means independent voters automatically receive election ballots for both Republican and Democratic Party elections. These unaffiliated voters outnumber both Republicans and Democrats in Colorado’s third district, making up about 44% of active voters. With the Democratic Party’s failure to come up with a high-profile candidate, there has been a concerted anti-Boebert push among quietly dissenting Republicans, angry unaffiliated voters and even Democrats who renounce their party registration to vote in the GOP primary against Boebert.”

One of the residents of Boebert’s district who would like to see her voted out of office is Susan Reed, a retired cultural archeologist who changed her registration from Democrat to unaffiliated.

Reed told the Guardian, “Boebert is an embarrassment to our district. We need a legislator and not a Fox News personality.”

A variety of Boebert opponents, according to Bowlin, are rallying around Colorado State Sen. Don Coram — a Republican and moderate conservative who is challenging Boebert in the primary. In the Colorado State Senate, Coram has a reputation for making deals with Democrats.

“At times, Coram’s politics veer beyond the normal GOP boundaries,” Bowlin observes. “In 2015, he helped write a bill to provide millions in state funding to provide free contraceptives to teenagers. Coram opposes abortions. Preventing them, in his view, requires easily available contraception."

Not surprisingly, Boebert has been slamming Coram as a RINO: Republican In Name Only.

Coram told The Guardian, “We’re concentrating on what we refer to as kitchen-table Republicans, the more moderate Republicans that aren’t all driven by theories and agendas. We’re concentrated on them and the unaffiliated vote.”

Coram is facing an uphill climb, as Boebert is popular with the MAGA crowd and is running in Colorado’s conservative 3rd Congressional District. Nonetheless, J. Miles Coleman, an election analyst for the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, believes that the June 28 primary is the best chance to get Boebert out of Congress.

Coleman predicts that if Boebert wins the primary, she will also win the general election. And Coleman doesn’t think that any of the Democratic primary candidates — who include Alex Walker, Sol Sandoval and Adam Frisch — would be able to defeat her.

Coleman told The Guardian, “It’s a conservative seat with a libertarian streak, especially on guns, taxes and government regulation. Boebert checks a lot of those boxes.”

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raw story 6 22 an

Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado told Fox News on Wednesday she intended to take legal action against the political action committee widely credited with making Madison Cawthorn the youngest member of Congress to lose a primary.

Following Cawthorn's defeat in May, the American Muckrakers PAC announced they were targeting Boebert, who is also a first-term Republican.

On Tuesday, the PAC published salacious allegations about Boebert working through a "sugar daddy" website prior to her election to Congress.

The group said "their team and volunteers have uncovered thatLauren Boebert was an unlicensed, paid escort and met clients through SugarDaddyMeet.com. Text messages show she was bankrupt at the time and looking for some 'side income' and called her work 'pay to play.' She was paid to 'escort' with wealthy men," the group alleged.

"According to our investigation, Boebert was hired by a wealthy male client in Aspen, Colorado, who was a Koch family member.Boebert's rich client subsequently introduced her to U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) in Aspen," the group alleged."After meeting with Senator Cruz, Boebert was encouraged by Cruz to run for political office. When Boebert announced her campaign for Congress in December 2019, Senator Cruz donated at least $136,250.00 to the Boebert Campaign and helped her raise large sums of money during trips Boebert made to Texas."

Boebert is now denying the accusations.

"Boebert's attorney sent a letter to the American Muckrakers PAC regarding the claims that she was an 'unlicensed paid escort' who had 'two abortions,' pledging to bring 'civil defamation' lawsuits against the PAC," Fox News reported.

Boebert said she would be undeterred by the "blatantly false and disgusting accusations."

"I am not going to stand by and pretend this is normal behavior," she told Fox News.

On Twitter, Boebert threatened criminal legal action.

---

beast

no lnx

twt

Liberals Rush to Spread Bogus Lauren Boebert Escort and Abortion Rumors

TOO GOOD TO CHECK

Democrats say they’re proof of Boebert’s hypocrisy. But they’re getting conned themselves.

Will Sommer

Politics Reporter

Updated Jun. 15, 2022 5:06PM ET / Published Jun. 15, 2022

Democrats have seized on a political action committee’s allegations that Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) worked as a prostitute and had multiple abortions—claims that rest on zero actual evidence.

On Tuesday, American Muckrakers PAC, co-founded by Democrat and former North Carolina state Senate candidate David Wheeler,published allegations claiming that Boebert had previously worked as an escort on a sugar-daddy website and underwent at least two abortions, one of which was related to her supposed sugar-baby work.

For Boebert’s critics, the idea that the anti-abortion rights conservative had in fact had multiple abortions herself offered irresistible proof of Boebert’s hypocrisy. The allegations quickly circulated in anti-Trump “Resistance” communities online. Occupy Democrats, a popular liberal Twitter account, conceded that it wasn’t clear whether the allegations were accurate. But it urged its nearly 400,000 Twitter followers to retweet the claims “IF YOU THINK THAT IT SOUNDS TRUE” anyway. Boebert’s name trended on Twitter.

The allegations against Boebert were echoed by other prominent online liberal Twitter pundits, including some current and former Democratic politicians, such as former House candidate Brianna Wu, Bernie Sanders ally and former House candidate Nina Turner, and current Kentucky Senate hopeful Charles Booker.

Boebert tweeted about the allegations on Tuesday night, giving them “four pinocchios.” She is consulting with her lawyers about a potential legal case, a senior staffer in Boebert’s office said.

The salacious Boebert accusations were fueled, in part, by the fact that American Muckrakers PAC’s founders backed up their outlandish claims against another Republican congressman. They rose to some level of political fame earlier this year after releasing several lewd videos of Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) that helped doom his reelection campaign.

[Inside the Relentless Campaign to Ruin Madison Cawthorn

OPPO DUMP

Sam Brodey,

Roger Sollenberger]

:{:{}:

This time, though, the group doesn’t have videos to support their allegations. Instead, they have heavily redacted text message screenshots with an anonymous party supposedly close to Boebert. In the messages, the anonymous source sketches out a tale that enters the realms of lurid liberal fan fiction. The text messages describe Boebert as a sex worker plucked from obscurity on a sugar-daddy website by one of her clients, a member of the Koch family. That client, in the PAC’s telling, then introduced Boebert to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who urged her to run for office.

Wheeler argues that the text messages are enough proof, since he knows the person behind them.

“They’re not anonymous to me,” Wheeler told The Daily Beast. “I know who this individual is.”

When the source’s story isn’t wild enough, the interviewer on the other end of the text conversation—one of the PAC’s staffers—pushes the source further. After the anonymous source writes that they “don’t get” why Cruz would support Boebert’s political aspirations, the interviewer asserts, without any proof, that Boebert was blackmailing Cruz.

“It’s obvious,” the interviewer writes. “She blackmailed him.”

“Omg I never thought about that!” the source responds.

“Yep,” the interviewer writes back. “You know her. She’s a kniving (sic) little witch.”

At least one of the source’s claims can already be disproven. In the text message log, the source provided the PAC with a picture of what’s described as a picture of Boebert, wearing a short white dress, sitting on a bed. The source claims the photo was taken from Boebert’s profile on a sugar-daddy website. But the woman in the picture is actually Melissa Carone, a supposed voter-fraud witness cited by Rudy Giuliani, according to a Daily Mail report from 2020.

After The Daily Beast published this article pointing out the discrepancy, Wheeler deleted the white-dress picture from his anti-Boebert website. Wheeler says he’s investigating whether the Daily Mail accurately identified Carone as the woman in the picture.

“Now, if our source got it wrong or she mixed the photo up, we’ll correct it,” Wheeler said.

Boebert doesn’t have a particularly close relationship with the truth herself. Among other things, in 2020, Boebert said she hoped QAnon, the conspiracy theory that posits that Democrats sexually abuse children in Satanic rituals, was real. She has also claimed that she started carrying a gun after a man was beaten to death outside her restaurant. But CNN reported in 2021 that the man died of a meth overdose, not murder.

Wheeler claims his PAC has more information it could release about Boebert, but concedes they may soon direct their attention elsewhere.

“We may have done everything we can do in Colorado at this point,” Wheeler said.

---

ref no speciics

no lnx raw story

in an interview with theDaily Beast's Matt Lewis, one of the members of the conservative group that pulled out all the stops to make sure that Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) lost his primary last Tuesday claimed that they are focusing their energy on also making Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) a one-term House member.

According to the conservative Lewis, it is possible that Boebert will be "Cawthornized" with an onslaught of attacks about her scandals that could be more effective in her case because her district is not as solidly red as it was when she won in 2020.

As David Wheeler of the American Muckrakers PAC explained, his group would never go as far as releasing a nude video of Boebert like they did to Cawthorn in the primary campaign's waning days, but said they would attempt to capitalize on her personal life which, like Cawthorn's, seems to be "an absolute mess."

With columnist Lewis going over Boebert -- and her husband's -- well-documented brushes with the law, he added, "there will be no dearth of material to use against Boebert, including things that are yet to emerge(scandals are sort of like cockroaches—for every one you see, there are probably a hundred hiding)."

RELATED: Things are 'likely to get ugly' as Madison Cawthorn makes threats after election loss: analyst

Speaking personally Lewis, wrote, "As a conservative, I’m certainly happy to trade toxic Republicans like Cawthorn and Boebert for more mainstream conservative Republicans," before adding, "Obviously, we are talking about negative campaigning here.There’s something about that feels inherently dirty, even if these candidates are beyond the pale. I think part of the story, though, is that groups like American Muckrakers are fulfilling a niche that was once performed by political parties and local newspapers."

"It won’t be easy, but it seems at least possible that Boebert will continue the trend that started last week with Cawthorn’s defeat. If that happens, it’s game on," he added before suggesting, "Defeating flawed politicians like Cawthorn and Boebert after one term would serve as a sort of course correction and send a message to everyone else."

"Not everyone is Harry Houdini. Not everyone is Donald Trump. Sometimes people are held accountable. Sometimes, the empire strikes back," he concluded.

You can read more here.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/watch-colorado-news-anchor-torches-lauren-boebert-s-echoing-of-a-conspiracy-theory-that-influenced-the-buffalo-shooting/

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Many D.C. politicians are—to paraphrase Winston Churchill—riddles wrapped in mysteries inside an enigma. Not so with Lauren Boebert. She’s twaddle wrapped in bacon inside an Arby’s. The congresswoman tends to wear her emotions on her sleeve, along with about 6 pounds of arrogance—apparently garnered from giving birth to offspring in weird, unsanitary places.

If voters in Colorado’s 3rd District, which Boebert somehow represents, still don’t know enough about the freshman congresswoman to reject her then we need to do something drastic, because her sins are legion. (She’s a horrible boss to her embittered employees, for one thing.)

With that in mind, the same rakish rapscallions who just successfully Moskva’d North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s thankfully brief congressional tenure are now taking aim at Boebert’s weak-ass claim to her seat.

Insider:

The group that posted a viral sexually explicit video of a nude Rep. Madison Cawthorn in bed with another man is now focusing on Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado for its next takedown, Insider has learned.

'I think we're going to go after Lauren Boebert in Colorado in a similar way,' David B. Wheeler, a cofounder of the American Muckrakers PAC,told Insider Wednesday. 'I think we're going to engage in that race pretty quickly.'

The group on Thursday launched fireboebert.com, seeking tips on information, pictures, videos, or documents on Boebert or her associates. The first tweet by @FireBoebert read, 'Hi @RepBoebert - Ask @RepCawthorn about us. We look forwarding to getting to know you.'

I seriously wonder what they could reveal that would be worse than what’s already out there. What could possibly turn off her base at this point? Finding out she once read a book without pictures?

The website sports a bright red-and-orange “FIRE BOEBERT” logo and boasts a reference to Cawthorn’s recent primary loss and Boebert’s upcoming primary. “One fired May 17. The other will be fired on June 28.”

Wheeler says he’s already collected “interesting information” on Boebert, though he admits it’s “certainly not as salacious as some of the Cawthorn stuff.” He told Insider that the information relates to financial matters, though he didn’t provide specifics.

That’s somewhat tantalizing, because Boebert has already found herself in hot water over campaign finance irregularities, having improperly used campaign funds to cover personal rent and utilities. What else might she be hiding?

Be sure to stop by fireboebert.com semi-regularly to find out. And to check out some of the“Bat Shit” messages that Boebert supporters (yes, they really do exist) have been sending the site since its launch.

---

an 5 22

Republicans just voted against two bills to ease the baby formula shortage they have spent weeks falsely trying to pin on President Joe Biden.

In tweets and in floor speeches, Republicans have been attacking President Biden for the nationwide baby formula shortage caused by one manufacturer’s recall and closure of its plant for bacterial infection after two infants died.The shortage has been exacerbated by a trade agreement signed by then-President Donald Trump that makes it extremely difficult and expensive to import formula from other countries, and the fact that 90 percent of baby formula in the U.S. is manufactured by just four companies. Also, hoarding, and price-gouging.

Last week President Biden sat down with manufacturers and retailers to map out a plan to get more formula onto store shelves immediately and directed the Food and Drug Administration to help get the plant reopened. This week he went two steps further: he invoked the Defense Production Act to force manufacturers to produce more formula and produce it ahead of other products and created a program to use federal planes to import baby formula from other countries.

House Democrats last week also opened an investigation into the baby formula shortage.

On Wednesday the House voted on two emergency bills to further ease the shortage.

One example of Republicans falsely attacking President Biden and the left is House GOP Caucus chair Elise Stefanik‘s now-infamous tweet accusing Democrats of having “no plan” as she labeled them “pedo grifters.”...

one bill would give FDA $28 million to add staff, work to help get more formula to consumers, and create a long-term strategy, including increased safety inspections so this cannot happen again. The second would dramatically increase supply from foreign sources to consumers using the federal Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Program.

192 House Republicans voted against giving FDA $28 million to help fix the crisis and ensure it does not happen again.

Nine House Republicans voted against making it easier for WIC customers to get access to baby formula.

Many Americans are becoming outraged as the news from last night’s votes is spreading online.

[Here’s the list of 9 members of Congress (all Republicans)who voted NO:

Marjorie Taylor Greene Matt Gaetz Louie GohmertLauren BoebertPaul Gosar Thomas Massie Andy Biggs Clay Higgins Chip Roy.]

---

3 22 trade vote ukraine

The vote was 424-8.

Here are the eight “no” votes – all from Republicans:

Lauren Boebert (CO)

Thomas Massie (KY)

Matt Gaetz (FL)

Andy Biggs (AZ)

Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA)

Dan Bishop (NC)

Chip Roy (TX)

Glenn Grothman (WI)

---

an cf origin myth

Why Lauren Boebert’s 'straight-talking small-town business owner' image is a total sham: report

Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado speaking at the 2021 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, Gage Skidmore]

Alex Henderson May 12, 2022

Not unlike Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado is a far-right MAGA Republican who has gone out of her way to court controversy since being sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2021. The 35-year-old Boebert, a QAnon supporter and conspiracy theorist, is running on a pseudo-populist platform in her 2022 reelection campaign. But journalist Abigail Weinberg, in an article published by Mother Jones on May 12, demonstrates that Boebert’s image as a “straight-talking small-town business owner” is a sham.

“A close look at Boebert’s past reveals cracks in the narrative she’s built,” Weinberg explains. “And for several people who worked at her restaurant and know her personally, Boebert’s American dream has been more like a ‘nightmare.’”

Boebert owns Shooter’s Grill, a restaurant in Rifle, Colorado.

“Former Shooters employees tell me that, in the early years of Boebert’s fame, people visited the restaurant from across the country, and that the dining room was often packed with tourists on summer days,” Weinberg reports. “But they also say that the reality of working at Shooters was far removed from the lighthearted atmosphere shown on TV. In fact, five former Shooters employees tell me that Boebert frequently failed to pay her employees on time. Two of the former workers wished to remain anonymous because they feared retaliation; another did not want to be named and publicly associated with Boebert.”

[no lnx twt]

A big part of Boebert’s hyper-MAGA narrative is that she had a tough working-class upbringing and that Democratic policies did nothing to help someone like her. But according to Weinberg’s sources, the Shooters owner has a history of not treating her employees well.

A former Shooters waitress told Weinberg, “The second the restaurant blew up, her head blew up — and it became something entirely different. And I got to meet a new version of her that is a monster.”

Weinberg reports, “Multiple employees say that they were paid in cash, either out of the register or from Boebert’s husband’s wallet, without any taxes deducted. While many workers were struggling to make ends meet, they say Boebert spent exorbitant sums on breast implants, private schooling for her sons, and a new Cadillac Escalade. They describe her as alternately absent, showing up only when news crews were at the restaurant, or demanding.”

Another former Shooters employee told Weinberg, “If she would come into the restaurant, everyone just knew we were just gonna have a bad day, because she would just walk around and nitpick.”

Josh Boyington, who worked as a cook at Shooters before leaving in 2017, alleges that Shooters was losing money in the late 2010s. Boyington told Weinberg, “Shooters don’t make no money. I left because I don’t even think we were topping $500 a day.”

Weinberg managed to get Boebert on the phone. But when the far-right MAGA congresswoman found out that Weinberg writes for Mother Jones, she hung up on her.

But Boyington was glad to talk to Weinberg, saying that while he agrees with many of Boebert’s right-wing views, he has issues with her as a person.

Boyington told Weinberg, “She’s an easy person to love if you don’t know her. It’s just, once you get to know her, you just don’t love her.”

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ron fein does better w/ MTG on block election, she rattled

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no lnx twt

Trump’s most strident House 'exhibitionists' are spending more than they’re bringing in: report

[Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia speaking at the 2021 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, Gage Skidmore]

Alex Henderson April 20, 2022

In the 2022 midterms, a long list of far-right House Republicans — from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina to Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado — are running for reelection. And if Republicans regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives as many pundits are predicting, extremists like Greene and Boebert, assuming they are reelected, will be part of the House’s majority party.But the Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger, in an article published on April 20, reports that some of Trump’s most strident “exhibitionists” in the U.S. House have been underperforming from a fundraising standpoint in 2022.

“Last year, it was a fundraising feast for the MAGA Goon Squad,” Sollenberger explains. “But in 2022, without the donor stimulus of an attempted insurrection, things are going in the wrong direction. The first three months of the year took more than $275,000 combined out of the pockets of Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) — the foursome of America First, Donald Trump-loving, exhibitionist election objectors. All told, it was their worst showing to date.”

Sollenberger continues, “It wasn’t always like this. In 2021, that crew saw eye-popping returns, stacking up a combined year-over-year gain of $4.8 million. The only one who showed a net loss on the year was Gaetz, whose campaign account shed $95,000 amid a drumroll of bombshell headlines and steep costs related to an ongoing child sex trafficking investigation. Still, the post-insurrection fundraising ground was so fertile that even he posted record fundraising hauls, taking in $3.2 million in the first half of 2021.”

Greene’s 2022 reelection campaign, according to Sollenberger, is spending more money than it’s bringing in.

“The campaign that led the way last year has also done the most damage this year,” Sollenberger observes. “That distinction would go to the Greene campaign, which, after banking $5.2 million last year, kicked off 2022 with a $3 million haul. While stunning, that total didn’t outstrip the record spending that ultimately left her $314,000 in the hole. It was Greene’s first negative fundraising return since she was elected.”

Sollenberger notes that Boebert “hasn’t turned in a quarterly loss,” but Gaetz and Cawthorn have. And even Boebert’s “quarter’s totals represented her smallest gains by far,” according to Sollenberger.

“The Gaetz campaign took a bath in both the second and third quarter last year, and Cawthorn hasn’t bulked up since his million-dollar fundraising spree on the heels of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol,” Sollenberger writes. “After losing another $41,300 since January, the Cawthorn campaign only holds about $282,000 — a little more than half its stash this time last year. And he’s sapped whatever firepower he might hold in his other committees, in the process rankling potential allies.”

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an 4 22

According to a report from Politico's Olivia Beavers, despite all outward appearances, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are at odds with each other, with the Colorado Republican unhappy she is mentioned in the same breath as her Georgia colleague.

In a deep dive into squabbles that are pulling apart the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus, Beavers reports that at a recent conference the two had to be separated.

According to the report, "Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert look from the outside like MAGA twins, both loathed by Democrats for their incendiary right-wing rhetoric. But inside the House GOP, they’re not quite buddy-buddy."

The report notes that Boebert fits in more with the thinking of her Republican colleagues ("a team player") and she joined many of them in being furious with Greene over her appearance at a white nationalist conference well months ago.

As Beavers wrote, when the House Freedom Caucus board of directors gathered last month at its usual spot a few blocks from the Capitol, the two tangled over Greene’s appearance at a February event organized by a known white nationalist."

"Their confrontation grew so heated that at least one onlooker feared the Greene-Boebert back-and-forth might escalate beyond the verbal cage match had another board member not stepped in to de-escalate, according to a GOP lawmaker who was granted anonymity to describe what happened," Politico reports.

"The incident was confirmed by three people connected to the Freedom Caucus, whose members largely avoided public criticism of Greene and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) at the time and focused their discontent on the event organizer, Nick Fuentes," the report added.

You can read more here.

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an 4 22

no lnx twt many

Lauren Boebert brutally mocked after implying that Biden is compromised by the Kremlin

Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado speaking at the 2021 AmericaFest at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, Gage Skidmore

Alex Henderson March 31, 2022

In 2022, it hasn’t been hard to find MAGA Republicans who were happy to defend or praise Russian President Vladimir Putin — a list that ranges from Fox News’ Tucker Carlson to “War Room” host Steve Bannon to former President Donald Trump. Arch-conservative Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming has even described Putin’s Republican defenders as the “Putin wing of the GOP.”

But Rep. Lauren Boebert, known for promoting far-right conspiracy theories and echoing QAnon talking points, implied that President Joe Biden is being compromised by Russia during a March 31 speech on the House floor. And Boebert, who had no proof to back that up, is being called out on social media.

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Attacking Biden’s interest in green energy, the Colorado congresswoman said, “We know that American natural gas is 42% cleaner than Russian gas. So, it’s not for environmental reasons. But maybe there’s another reason we don’t know about. Perhaps there’s 10% in this tucked away for the big guy.”

Boebert’s comments come at a time when U.S./Russia relations, under Biden, are the worst they’ve been since the days of the Soviet Union and Biden is imposing tough economic sanctions against Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

When MAGA Republicans claim that Biden is compromised by a foreign government, they usually claim that it’s Ukraine — which, Bryan Tyler Cohen notes on Twitter, is a common anti-Biden claim in Trumpworld:

Some Twitter users have pointed out that Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich has a steel mill in Boebert's state:

Here are some more responses to Boebert's anti-Biden comments:

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/lauren-boebert-2656827455/ ~ heckle

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sotu 3 22

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) wasn't part of the Republican response to President Joe Biden's State of the Union Address, but she tried to be. In her own SOTU response video, she ranted against everything President Joe Biden stands for, Newsweek reported.

Republicans have been criticized as the "party of no," for the past two Democratic presidents, columnist Nicholas Goldberg noted in the Los Angeles Times. Greene brought that to a whole new level Tuesday night after the big speech. While many Republicans gave Biden standing ovations over bipartisan initiatives and cheers for America, Greene struggled to find anything she liked. Instead, she sought to rant against Democrats in a 30-minute, conspiracy-laden, word-salad for the Right Side Broadcasting Network.

Greene was one of two Republicans, with Lauren Boebert, who attempted to heckle Biden during the speech, drawing boos from both sides. While Biden addressed the international coalition he's worked to build to help Ukraine, Greene maintained, "under President Trump, this [war] would have never happened. For four years, our country had a real leader that led America and the entire world to peace for strength."

Greene didn't clarify how Trump would have prevented the war, however, or clarify how Trump is stronger. The international community has praised Biden, making it clear that there's no way Trump could have crafted the coalition that Biden worked months to build.

The congresswoman hurled insults, calling Biden "a mentally incompetent, feckless, dementia-ridden piece of crap."

Her speech came after she was triggered into making a video on the right-wing site Gettr. "Joe Biden, you are not a president. You are a piece of s*it," she said.

Greene went on to rant about Afghanistan, falsely claiming "thousands of Americans" were still stuck there. As of Jan. 11, that number was closer to 80. On Feb. 1, Qatar reached a deal with the Taliban to restart the flights and evacuations.

She then claimed that Biden was "compromised" by foreign leaders due to the conspiracy theory about his son's laptop. Biden, she said, is working for "anyone, anywhere that has blackmail evidence on his sexually deviant drug-addled deadbeat dad pathetic, sorry, embarrassing excuse of a son."

Newsweek noted: "Fox News' Tucker Carlson also promised to reveal 'authentic, real and damning' documents regarding Hunter Biden's business dealings in China and the Ukraine, which he later claimed were lost in the mail."

Greene has been criticized this week after she spoke at a white supremacist conference where Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler were praised from the podium. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) took the rare opportunity to rebuke her and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) promised to give her another "talking to." But according to Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), it's Republicans like Greene who are actually running the caucus now.

See the complaints from angry Americans below:

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an 222

Carlson donated to Marjorie Taylor Greene in gun giveaway promo to 'blow away Democrats’ socialist agenda'

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

Fox News host Tucker Carlson made a campaign donation to U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene last September as part of a gun giveaway for an assault-style rifle reportedly “loved...

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/lauren-boebert-2655985643/

troll phenom

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jihad squad // gosar AOC

Boebert walloped by local news anchor in epic on-air takedown

Travis Gettys Raw Story

A local broadcaster shredded Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) in a scathing on-air editorial.

Kyle Clark, a KUSA-TV anchor, scolded his fellow journalists...11 21

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'Coward' Lauren Boebert blasted for turning charity event into QAnon pedophile conspiracy attack against Biden

Lauren Boebert speaking with attendees at the 2020 Student Action Summit, hosted by Turning Point USA at the Palm BeachCounty Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, Gage Skidmore

David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement September 30, 2021

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) decided to turn a local D.C. Boys & Girls Clubinto a tool of her relentless attacks against President Joe Biden Thursday morning, after Wednesday's annual Congressional Baseball Game.

Every year for the past 112 years (except for 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic) members of Congress have joined together to participate in the national pastime – these days a rare moment of sportsmanship and bipartisanship.

And it's all for charity.

Since 2017 the four charities that benefit from the game are the Washington Nationals Dream Foundation, the Washington Literacy Center, theU.S. Capitol Police Memorial Fund, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington.

Congresswoman Boebert, a pro-gun extremist who claims to support the police could have supported members of the U.S. Capitol Police in a tweet, but instead she used the Boys and Girls Club as a pedophilic pawn in her QAnon attack against the President.

Boebert claims to have dropped her allegiance to the antisemitic pro-Trump conspiracy theory, but her actions speak otherwise. She recently hired a husband and wife team of QAnon conspiracy theorists for her Colorado Shooters restaurant and congressional office.

For those who need a reminder, BBC called QAnon "a wide-ranging, completely unfounded theory that says that President Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media."

The New York Times adds that "QAnon followers believe that this cabal includes top Democrats like President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and George Soros, as well as a number of entertainers and Hollywood celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks and Ellen DeGeneres and religious figures including Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama. Many of them also believe that, in addition to molesting children, members of this group kill and eat their victims to extract a life-extending chemical called adrenochrome."

Enter Congresswoman Boebert, who Thursday morning posted this tweet:

The outrage against the Colorado Republican has been especially palpable, with many pointing to her own husband's lewd acts.

:{:{}:

"In January 2004," The New York Post reports, Jayson Boebert "was arrested after allegedly exposing his penis to two women at a bowling alley, according to an arrest affidavit. Lauren Boebert (then age 17 and known as Lauren Opal Roberts) was also there. Jayson Boebert pleaded guilty to public indecency and lewd exposure, earning himself four days in jail and two years' probation."

Here's how some are responding to Boebert's tweet:

In just one tweet she insults a well-respected service organization and re-invites the world to comment on her husb… https://t.co/Wd3ra51Jge

— Mattie Timmer (@Mattie Timmer) 1633005767.0

@laurenboebert Where was your husband tho?

— Chocolate Giddyup (@Chocolate Giddyup) 1632998648.0

@laurenboebert Good morning! #boebertreportcard time! https://t.co/NgkTFIQTgQ

— Leland Hermit (@Leland Hermit) 1632998518.0

@laurenboebert https://t.co/5K1VrymPF8 You paid this back but I think those who care about accountability should pr… https://t.co/2WmJiS2WGP

— Stand up for democracy Pass HR1 (@Stand up for democracy Pass HR1) 1633002026.0

@laurenboebert Is this the best comment you could make about the charity event? REALLY?

— Moving Forward (@Moving Forward) 1633003236.0

@laurenboebert You're fucking trash

— Jason (@Jason) 1633007853.0

#ad_free_post_article

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follow church

https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/lauren-boerbert/

domininist?

rww 921

september 13, 2021

Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado Saturday at a conference held by the Truth & Liberty Coalition, a religious-right political organization founded by right-wing pastor Andrew Wommack.

Addressing a crowd of conservative Christian activists gathered in the auditorium at Wommack’s Charis Bible College, Boebert called on the audience to put faith into action by calling on God to remove ungodly leaders in Washington, D.C., and replace them with “righteous men and women of God” who realize that the government should be taking orders from the church.

“When we see Biden address the nation and the world and show more contempt and aggravation and aggression towards unvaccinated Americans than he does terrorists, we have a problem,” Boebert. “And that’s why I have articles of impeachment to impeach Joe Biden, Kamala Harris.”

“We cannot take another 18 months, we cannot take another three years of this poor, failed leadership,” she continued. “We are sons and daughters of revolutionaries. They went to battle for a lot less. They took a stand for a lot less. And it’s time we get involved. I need you involved in every local level. I need you speaking up. I need the world to hear your voice. You know the word of God, and you know that there is power in your words, that the world was framed by words. You have the Lord God Almighty on your side. I need you to use your voice and speak.”

“What if Jesus showed up today and said, ‘From this point forward, everything you say you will have it’?” Boebert asked rhetorically. “He said it! That’s exactly what he said to us. So, what are we saying? Are we going to sit and agree with the enemy? Are we going to agree with what the enemy is doing? Are we going to sit back and complain and murmur? Or are we going tospeak life into this nation? Are we going to speak victory? Are we going to declare that God removes these unrighteous politicians, these corrupt, crooked politician, and installs righteous men and women of God?”

“You have the God kind of faith, and that faith speaks,” she added. “That faith speaks to mountains, those impossible, immovable situations, and I think there’s some mountains they need to hear your voice. … It’s time the church speaks up. The church has relinquished too much authority to government. We should not be taking orders from the government; the government needs to be looking at the church and saying, ‘How do we do this effectively?'”

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calls them terrorists?! nope jenna

https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/jenna-ellis/

gOP's Lauren Boebert slammed for mocking Afghans killed trying to flee on US plane

Leah Foreman Salon

August 17, 2021

There has been a rush of Republican critiques and complaints about the Biden administration's execution of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of fighting. But no reaction appears to have gone...

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an 621 igor salon

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., is returning to her QAnon roots to push a conspiracy theory suggesting that the Clintons may be behind the death of a journalist who is believed to have died by suicide.

Boebert suggested on Twitter that the "Clinton Crime Syndicate" may be behind the death of local Alabama news anchor Christopher Sign, who broke the story about former President Bill Clinton's tarmac meeting with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch during the 2016 presidential campaign and FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server, which itself has been the target of countless Republican conspiracy theories. Local police have given no indications of foul play in Sign's death and told NBC News that the death is being investigated as a suicide.

"Why is it that so many who cross the Clinton Crime Syndicate end up dead?" Boebert tweeted along with a clip of Sign promoting his book about the meeting during a 2019 interview on Fox News. Sign said in the interview that he left his job in Phoenix to move back to Alabama because he and his family "received significant death threats shortly after breaking this story." [twt vid?]

it's not the first time Boebert has pushed conspiracy theories about Clinton. Asked during a town hall in March about whether Hillary Clinton and the former heads of the CIA and FBI would be arrested, the freshman congresswoman echoed QAnon-style conspiracy theories claiming that "with that information that I have, I believe we will see resignations begin to take place and I think we can take back the majority in the House and the Senate before 2022 when all of this is ended."

Boebert has previously expressed support for the QAnon conspiracy theory but denies being a follower. QAnon conspiracy theories have long targeted Clinton, baselessly alleging that she is part of a globalist child trafficking ring that cuts the faces off babies and wears them on video.

Donald Trump Jr., who has a long history of spreading conspiracy theories himself, also suggested that Sign's suicide may be some nefarious plot.

"Has anyone ever seen so many suicide coincidences EVER???" he wrote on Instagram while sharing a screenshot of a headline about Sign's death.

Trump Jr. similarly pushed long-debunked conspiracy theories about the murder of Seth Rich, a former Democratic National Committee staffer who was killed in Washington D.C. in what police suspected to be an attempted robbery. Conservatives pushed conspiracy theories that Rich was killed because he was somehow connected to the release of stolen Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign. The conspiracy theories were also promoted on Fox News, which ultimately retracted its reporting and settled out of court with Rich's family.

Debunked conservative conspiracy theories about the Clintons' "body count" date back to Bill Clinton's days in the White House, when right-wingers claimed that many of those connected to the Clinton's had died under "suspicious" circumstances even when they hadn't. Many have focused on the suicide of Vince Foster, Clinton's former deputy White House counsel who died of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head in 1993. Multiple investigations, including the infamous Ken Starr probe, concluded that the death was a suicide but Republicans like Trump Jr. have continued to refer to in the decades since. Former President Donald Trump and others renewed the conspiracy theory in 2019 after the suicide of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump shared tweets alleging that the Clintons, longtime associates of Epstein, were behind his death even though Trump also frequently hung out with the disgraced financier.

"This conspiracy just sort of hung around," Joe Uscinski, a University of Miami professor and author of the book, "American Conspiracy Theories," told NBC News. "Mainly because the Clintons have been in power for so long and because she's the most recent face of the Democratic Party. She's a good boogeyman for Republicans to use now still."

Uscinski said the conspiracy theory has become especially popular with "QAnon" followers, who have gone even further than the nutty conservative claims in the 1990s.

"Q also absurdly implied that Hillary Clinton was somehow responsible for the tragic plane crash that killed JFK Jr. in 1999," Travis View, a podcaster who tracks QAnon, told NBC. "A minority sect of QAnon followers believe that Clinton merely tried and failed to kill JFK Jr, and he is still alive today."

Clinton recently responded to the decades-old conspiracy theories in a video with "Borat" star Sasha Baron Cohen."It's hurtful, I'll be really honest with you," she said. "It's hurtful not just to me and my family, but, you know, to my friends, and other people who know that this is not just false, but you know, sometimes painfully false."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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When Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018, the progressive Democrat expected to have frequent policy differences not only with Republicans, but also, with centrists in her own party. However, attacks on Omar from the far right — including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and pundits at Fox News — go way beyond policy disagreements, painting her as fundamentally anti-American and an outright enemy of the United States. And on June 9, Omar tweeted a racist, threatening message her office received following a tweet by Boebert and the June 7 publication of an anti-Omar article by Houston Keene on Fox News' website.

In a June 8 tweet, Boebert — a supporter of the far-right QAnon conspiracy cult — described Omar as an "honorary member of Hamas" and one of the "terrorist sympathizers in Congress." Members of QAnon were among the violent extremists involved in the January 6 insurrectionist assault on the U.S. Capitol Building.

In her June 9 tweet, Omar — who is a Muslim and is originally from Somalia — noted that it isn't unusual for her to be "inundated with death threats." And she cited the call that she tweeted as a prime example. That racist caller can be heard saying, "Muslims are terrorists. And she is a raghead n*****. And every anti-American communist piece of shit that works for her, I hope you get what's fucking coming for you."

Omar tweeted that calls like the one she posted are "incited directly by articles like this" — a reference to Keene's article for Fox News' website — and "far-right politicians like" Boebert.

TW: Every time I speak out on human rights I am inundated with death threats. Here is one we just got. “Muslims ar… https://t.co/tKLay3dwdl

— Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan Omar) 1623286390.0

This is incited directly by articles like this and far right politicians like this. And it is enabled by a politic… https://t.co/6Ogf2nXnMX

— Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan Omar) 1623286456.0

Here are some reactions to the racist, threatening call Omar's office received:

@IlhanMN Its really ironic since Boebert is literally a terrorist sympathizer (if not directly involved) when it co… https://t.co/RBMVTRqWyJ

— AnarchyPunished2:ElectricBoogaloo (@AnarchyPunished2:ElectricBoogaloo) 1623287545.0

@IlhanMN This is truly disgusting. You deserve so much better.

— Tammy Ellis ???? (@Tammy Ellis ????) 1623291291.0

@IlhanMN I hope you're reporting these messages to the FBI. Sometimes all it takes is a visit for people to realize they've crossed a line.

— Fran Adkins (@Fran Adkins) 1623287261.0

@IlhanMN Damn shame. So sorry you have to deal with that.

— Matt Gordon (@Matt Gordon) 1623286921.0

@MaryWalsh_NL @IlhanMN She was literally tweeting the location of her colleagues when violent fascists were stormin… https://t.co/AGldXKhIOx

— ThisIsItChief SupportBDS???? (@ThisIsItChief SupportBDS????) 1623312669.0

...

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see young guns

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/06/donald-trumps-parting-gift-to-washington-was-a-party-of-shitposters/

rkj

i've seen many things at the Conservative Political Action Conference over the years, including many things I wish I hadn’t. But until Ted Cruz spoke to a ballroom of activists from the main stage in Orlando in February, I had never seen an elected official interrupt his own speech to promote a podcast.

“Please go subscribe,” barked the Texas Republican, sounding more like a street performer with a SoundCloud than a second-term senator. “Verdict With Ted Cruz! Verdict With Ted Cruz! Click on ‘subscribe.’ Five stars, please!”

One week earlier, Cruz had left his constituents and his poodle behind to wait out his state’s deadly grid failure at the Ritz-Carlton in Cancun. It was the sort of PR disaster that would leave many politicians reeling. Cruz tried to monetize the controversy instead, printing a line of Barstool Sports–chic “spring break” tank tops with a caricature of his nascent mullet. He may never lead the Republican Party, but Cruz always knows its temperature, and in the space of a few minutes in Orlando, between jokes about his ill-advised Mexican vacation and plugs for his side project, he managed to distill this conservative moment to its essence. Increasingly, as world-historical crises unfurl all around them—often exacerbated by their own policies and actions—the GOP’s most ambitious officials view their primary responsibility less as public servants than as content creators, churning out an endless stream of takes, memes, stunts, and podcasts. So many podcasts.

The Republican Party has long been infused with an irrepressible hustle, what the historian Rick Perlstein calls “mail-order conservatism.” Talk radio and direct mail were not only effective at peddling reactionary politics to voters; they were also perfect vehicles to sell products, such as gold and home-security systems. For decades these conjoined strains of politics, entertainment, and marketing have eroded trust in public institutions and the media and provided a template for self-aggrandizement and enrichment. There is nothing really like this on the left; Infowars and Goop sell the same pills, but Gwyneth Paltrow is not fomenting rebellion.

The way conservatism manifested itself over the airwaves has shaped what rank-and-file conservatives expect to be told and how they expect to feel about it. The late Rush Limbaugh’s listeners called themselves “dittoheads,” eager to nod along with everything. Newt Gingrich used to distribute tapes of himself talking so that candidates could emulate his language. In the 1980s, he weaponized C-SPAN’s new House cameras—where members previously addressed each other, Gingrich and his allies began speaking past them. They turned the Capitol into a studio and made politics into a product. Donald Trump easily won the Republican base because it had been primed for someone who could provide both the programming and the commercial breaks, sometimes all at once; in conservative politics, after all, you’re always being asked to buy something.

Trump’s presidency blew past the old frontiers: The performance of politics became the purpose of it.

But Trump’s presidency blew past the old frontiers: The performance of politics became the purpose of it, and the grind of governance became secondary to the responsibilities of posting.

It was as if, after years of awkward but largely profitable power-sharing between conservative politicians and conservative media, the Republican Party at last stumbled upon the ultimate efficiency: What if both roles could be played by the same person? Trump once dreamed of spinning a losing presidential bid into his own media entity.

During the pandemic, in lieu of crisis management, he turned briefings into a variety show, assembling a rotating cast of characters, and plugging an array of sponsors—MyPillow, Carnival, Pernod Ricard. You would not necessarily get good medical advice, but you would learn that Hanes is a “great consumer cotton products company” that’s being recognized more and more.

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There was no issue grave enough to take seriously and no controversy too petty to weigh in on. Anything could be resolved via tweet, precisely because nothing really can; the ephemerality was the point. And a rising generation of politicians learned an important lesson about what conservative voters wanted. If Limbaugh taught them all how to talk, Trump taught them how to govern. His enduring gift was a caucus of content creators.

Just consider the Republican congressional class of 2021—the new arrivals to Washington who modeled themselves most directly after Trump. They seem almost blissfully detached from the work of Congress. There is 25-year-old Madison Cawthornof North Carolina, who was elected on the strength of a largely invented personal story amplified with loads of influencer-style Instagram posts. He recently posted a 19-second video of himself punching the bark off a tree. Cawthorn boasted to his colleagues that he had built his staff “around comms rather than legislation.” He was in Washington, in other words, mostly just to post.

Cawthorn boasted to his colleagues that he had built his staff “around comms rather than legislation.”

When Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon representative from Georgia, was stripped of her committee assignments in February by colleagues upset that she had harassed fellow members of Congress and blamed forest fires on the Rothschilds, she greeted the news with relief. “If I was on a committee, I would be wasting my time,” she said. Now she was more free to share videos of her CrossFit workouts with the hashtag #FireFauci. Not that showing up for committee hearings necessarily means you’re there to work. Colorado’s Lauren Boebert,who like Cawthorn and Greene spent her first weeks on the job scaring the shit out of her co-workers, recently hijacked a virtual committee hearing by posing like John Wick in front of a shrine of firearms in her living room. (“Who says this is storage?” she responded to critics. “These are ready for use.”)

Cawthorn, Greene, and Boebert were all members of the National Republican Campaign Committee’s “Young Guns” program, which takes its name from an earlier trio of House Republicans—one of whom, Paul Ryan, went on to become a vice presidential nominee and speaker of the House and unite the party behind a vision of budget austerity. There is surely some sort of ideology at work here, too, but it’s more Jake Paul than Paul Ryan; they are treating the Capitol like their own hype house, using the stature of their office for clout.

R. Kikuo Johnson

These younger, gunnier guns are taking cues from their elders. Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a content farm of a congressman who has filmed not one but two Avengers-style videos in which the ex–Navy SEAL parachutes out of airplanes to fight Democrats, also hosts a podcast. So doesDevin Nunes. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz has a podcast called Hot Takes. Before he became publicly embroiled in a federal sex-trafficking investigation (“If you aren’t making news, you aren’t governing,” Gaetz once said), he was considering retiring to take a job at the conservative cable channel Newsmax. In February, more than a dozen House Republicans—including Gaetz and Nunes—skipped work to speak at CPAC with Cruz. They took advantage of a covid-era policy that let members vote by proxy in medical emergencies; to them, promoting their brands is the job.

After watching Cruz’s speech I took his advice and checked out Verdict, which he co-hosts with Michael Knowles, who rose to prominence after publishing an entirely blank book called Reasons to Vote for Democrats. Cruz recorded the first episode at 2:40 a.m. after the opening day of Trump’s Ukraine impeachment trial—hence the name of the show—and returned to the studio every night of the proceedings. Within days of its debut, Verdict had passed Joe Rogan on the iTunes charts.At CPAC, Cruz announced it had been downloaded 25 million times. It is almost certainly the most popular thing he has ever done....

no twt pix dress all blk looks like skater chick

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)is leading the charge among House Republicans to refuse to follow Speaker Nancy Pelosi's rule continuing the mask mandate, with at least a dozen far right lawmakers flouting their obligation.

"Masks are oppressive and nothing but a political tool. End the oppression!" Greene tweeted Tuesday.

As with many issues from the far right House members, they are literally the cause of their own issues. The House mask mandate has remained in place because, according to CNN, less than half of the House members say they are vaccinated. One hundred percent of House Democrats are, the unvaccinated are all Republicans.

Forbes' Andrew Solender reports among those refusing to wear masks on the House floor are "some of the House's most vocal right-wingers: Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Laure Boebert (R-Colo.), Mary Miller (R-Ill.), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Chip Roy (R-Texas), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas)."

The hypocrisy isn't limited to refusing to be vaccinated.

Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, according to Solender, "says he 'got into it' with the GOP lawmakers and joked that they are pro-choice when they told him the mandate is a 'violation of their right to decide for themselves.'"

They replied 'absolutely not, it's a totally different thing,' he says."

The U.S. is approaching 34 million cases of COVID-19, and just passed 600,000 coronavirus deaths.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/lauren-boebert-2650332326/

1st town hall brutal q

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sue parody site

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/lauren-boebert/

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shook head on guns in sotu but deer in headlights?

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an me 321

no lnx

docs

Fact-checker blows the lid off Lauren Boebert's tale about a man's death being the reason she carries a gun

Newly-elected GOP members deny giving 'reconnaissance' tours before Capitol attack. So who did?

Roger Sollenberger

Meaghan Ellis March 12, 2021

When Rep. Lauren Boebert's (R-Colo.) compelling story to explain her gun rights advocation has been dismantled by fact-checkers who are now offering clarity on her claims.

The Washington Post has given Boebert three Pinocchios after uncovering hard facts about her claims. On multiple occasions, Boebert, who became a popular name among conservatives due to the gun-friendly policies in place at her restaurant in Shooters Grill of Rifle, Colo., has insisted that a fatal altercation outside of her restaurant led to her decision to carry a firearm and allow her staff to also do so.

In a previous tweet, Boebert said, "After a violent incident outside my business, I took advantage of Colorado's open-carry laws and began to carry at work."

Reiterating those same remarks, Boebert appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) where she alluded to the story again on February 27 saying, "Shortly after we opened our restaurant, there was an altercation where a man was beat to death … outside of my restaurant, beat to death by another man. No weapons. And I immediately wondered, how am I going to protect everyone?"

Most recently on March 10, Boebert rehashed the story yet again. She said, "When I became a business owner, I needed to protect myself,. There was an altercation outside of my restaurant where a man was physically beat to death. There were no weapons involved. He was beat to death by another man's hands."

Despite referencing the incident on multiple occasions, the publication has unearthed "raw investigative files" complied by the Rifle Police Department's fact-checker which proves Boebert has not been completely truthful about what happened on that fateful night.

According to the report, Boebert's claims about the man who was allegedly killed outside of her restaurant are "mainly fictional." The report notes that investigators determined the man, identified as Anthony Green, "had been briefly involved in a fight, possibly related to a drug transaction."

Witnesses also revealed, "Green had fought with a man who had a prosthetic leg, which then fell off." One witness confirmed, Green "duked that guy out." Initially, the fight raised suspicions about the possibility of Green's death being a homicide, but after gathering more evidence, investigators determined that may not have been the best categorization.

Rifle Colo 2013 records -- ... by GlennKesslerWP

The publication reports:

"Investigators interviewed witnesses and collected evidence, the possibility of murder quickly appeared remote. Green had a gash on the head, but that appeared to be from a fall. There were no obvious injuries to his abdomen. In his pocket, he was carrying a glass pipe that was filled with the residue of methamphetamine."

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The final autopsy report led to the discovery of methamphetamine in Green's system. The forensic pathologist Robert Kurtzman also determined that "postmortem examination of the decedent revealed superficial abrasions consistent with a fall."

:{:{}:

Kurtzman also made it clear that "the abrasions were not associated with any internal injury, whereas 'methamphetamine is known to cause sudden death and abnormal behavior.'"

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an 220

gOP Rep. Lauren Boebert's massive mileage reimbursements to herself raise campaign finance 'red flags'

Meaghan Ellis

February 03, 2021

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) is at the center of controversy over questionable mileage reimbursements paid to her from

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equally predictably

Congressman Steve Cohen (D-TN) on Monday identified freshman Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) as the member of Congress who gave a "large tour" in the days before the January 6 Capitol insurrection.

"We saw Congressman Boebert taking a group of people for a tour sometime after the 3rd and before the 6th," Rep. Cohen told CNN late Monday morning, adding that "she had a large group with her."

"She's not on the home team," Cohen said.

"We saw congress[woman] Boebert taking a group of people for a tour sometime after the 3rd and before the 6th." --… https://t.co/Cov4VrrK0S

— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar)1610986779.0

Boebert, as many have noted, tweeted Speaker Pelosi's location – or, to be specific, removal – during the insurrection....===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/lauren-boebert-2649950431/

no lnx

GOP congresswoman denies she led 'insurrectionists' on Capitol tour ahead of violent assault

Riot police clear the hallway inside the Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C.. - Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/TNS

Newly sworn-in West Virginia lawmaker was among the Pro-Trump mob that stormed the US Capitol

Travis Gettys January 15, 2021

A newly elected Republican congresswoman denied leading a tour last week for "insurrectionists" who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol the following day.

Democrats have called for an investigation into claims that some GOP House members gave "reconnaissance" tours to groups on Jan. 5, the day before President Donald Trump's supporters burst into the Capitol in an effort to overturn his election loss, and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) pushed back against suspicions against her, reported the Washington Post.

"You said that you could 'confirm' a Member of Congress gave Capitol tours to 'insurrectionists' and implied I was that Member of Congress," Boebert said in a letter to Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY), who has called for criminal charges against lawmakers who allegedly led those tours. "Your comments are extremely offensive, shameful and dangerous."

Maloney, however, responded by pointing that he hadn't identified anyone by name suspected of assisting the insurrectionists.

"Um, I've never said your name in public, @RepBoebert. Never. Not once," Maloney said in a tweet late Thursday night. "(If you're going to be a gun nut, you probably shouldn't go off half cocked.) I'll tweet the transcript so you can see … but that might be like 'a fact', so might not help you."

Rep. Mikie Sherill (D-NJ) said Tuesday that she saw another House member leading groups through the building one day before the Jan. 6 insurrection that left one police officer and four rioters dead, and Maloney accused an unnamed GOP lawmaker of assisting the protesters.

"Some of our new colleagues," Maloney told MSNBC, "the same ones, of course, who believe in conspiracy theories and who want to carry guns into the House Chamber, who today — today — have been yelling at Capitol Police, shoving Capitol police — who a week ago right now were risking their lives to save ours. This conduct is beyond the pale and extends to some of this interaction with the very people who attacked the Capitol."

Maloney did not identify Boebert or anyone else by name, but the Colorado Republican -- who has expressed support for the Qanon conspiracy theory -- said his remarks led many to suspect he was speaking about her, and she said the comment had prompted death threats against her.

"I did not conspire with criminals that attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6," she told Maloney in the letter. "I have never given a tour of the U.S. Capitol to any outside group or 'insurrectionists.'"

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stivers, scalise

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/house-metal-detector

no lnx twt

Republican lawmakers throw a fit over new metal detectors at the House chamber

Cody Fenwick January 13, 2021

Following the brutal assault on the U.S. Capitol last week by supporters of the president hoping to overturn the election, Congress is stepping up its security. And on Tuesday night, multiple Republican lawmakers expressed their outrage at new metal detectors placed at the entrance of the House chamber.

Officials seem to believe these measures are necessary following the attempted insurrection, especially in light of the fears that Republican members, some of whom have bragged about wanting to bring guns onto the House floor, may have been supportive of the mob.

"There are concerns about the gun-toting members, but also we don't know who they're going to bring to the inauguration who can bypass the metal detectors," on Democratic representative told CNN. "Until there's an investigation and until we understand our colleagues' level of complicity in the attack we don't know how involved they really were. Until we have answers I don't think we should trust them – not all of them of course, but some of them."

Perhaps further raising suspicions, Republicans were furious when they had to enter the chamber on Tuesday.

"Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who has bragged about her desire to carry a weapon on Capital Hill is currently in a standoff with Capitol Police at the newly installed Metal Detectors outside the chamber doors," CNN's Ryan Nobles reported on Tuesday evening. "Boebert walked through with her bag which set off the mags. She refused to offer the bag over to be searched and is now in a standoff with Cap Police."

He added: "Capitol Police won't let her in until Boebert shows them what is in her bag, she won't and is now standing by the entrance of the chamber. She is respectful but defiant."

On Twitter, she objected to the new policy:

Boebert has been of particular concern because she tweeted out that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had left the chamber in the middle of the Jan.6 invasion by the pro-Trump mob, even though members were told not to share this kind of information for security reasons. Some believe she may have been intentionally trying to give the mob information about one of its targets. Boebert has previously expressed her support for the conspiracy fiction QAnon, though she subsequently said she was not a "follower." She has reportedly been tied to other extremist groups.

She wasn't the only one objecting to the new security measures on Tuesday, other reporters revealed.

Republican Rep. Debbie Lesko of Arizona also complained about the change on Twitter, provoking many critics to point out that metal detectors are accepted at many other parts of life, such as in airports and some schools.

For members of Congress to enter the floor of the U.S. House, we now have to go through intense security measures, on top of the security we already go through. These new provisions include searches and being wanded like criminals. We now live in Pelosi’s communist America!

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While it’s good news that KDVR asked her directly about her connections to the movement, several experts on the subject worry about how the press will handle QAnon, generally.

In many ways, Boebert and other QAnon-following candidates have been normalized in the press. FiveThirtyEight published an article about the likelihood that Republican women will increase their representation in Congress with the November elections, and used a photo of Boebert. Her fringe beliefs are not mentioned anywhere in the article or accompanying tweet.

When The New York Times wrote about Boebert’s victory, it made a passing reference to her support of QAnon, saying in the lead that she’d “spoken approvingly of the pro-Trump conspiracy theory QAnon.” It wasn’t until the 11th paragraph that the movement got mentioned again, and even that was framed in the context of how “Democrats immediately went on the attack” for her support of QAnon.

Media Matters’ Alex Kaplan has reported extensively on the QAnon movement, and he has identified two concepts that journalists need to understand when reporting on this movement. The first has to do with QAnon-supporting candidates and the need to probe their actual beliefs. “Some of these candidates seem to see QAnon and its supporters as an explicit political constituency to appeal to for support, and are trying to use existing QAnon infrastructure to do so, such as using QAnon hashtags (particularly #WWG1WGA) and going on QAnon YouTube channels,” he says. “So they seem to be treating a far-right conspiracy theory group tied to violence and flagged by the FBI as some normal voting block when it's clearly not.”

The second issue is that reporters often seem unaware of, or aren’t reporting on, the actual number of QAnon-supporting candidates who are progressing in their races. Kaplan says, “I keep seeing just a few specific candidates mentioned over and over regarding those who made it out of primaries or to primary runoffs (Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jo Rae Perkins), when it's way more than that; it's at least 14 candidates that made it out of primaries to the ballot in November or to primary runoffs (and that's leaving out independent/write-in candidates).”

Boebert certainly seems to fall into Kaplan’s category of QAnon candidates who may not be true believers of the conspiracy theory, but have found it politically expedient to associate themselves with it during the primary. Unfortunately, Boebert is nowhere near the only Q-curious candidate running for office.Kaplan has counted a total of 63 current and former congressional candidates who’ve either endorsed or lent credence to the theory. More than a dozen of those candidates will appear on the ballot come November.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, who came in first in her Georgia Republican primary, sending her on to an August 11 runoff, is an extremely vocal Q supporter who shared a campaign video in which she holds an assault weapon and demands that “antifa terrorists stay the hell out of northwest Georgia.”

“Q is a patriot. We know that for sure, but we do not know who Q is,” Greene says in a video. She later adds, “I think [Q] is something worth listening to and paying attention to.” The Cook Political Report lists Georgia’s 14th district as an R+27, meaning that if she wins in her August primary runoff, it’s extremely likely that she will be elected to Congress.

It’s worrisome that politicians who believe in outlandish conspiracy theories may soon be in positions of massive power without being given necessary scrutiny.

What will it mean to put someone in power who honestly believes that President Donald Trump was secretly working with special counsel Robert Mueller to uncover a “deep state” conspiracy and fight back against a global child-trafficking cabal being run by celebrities and leaders in the Democratic Party? This is a movement that believes that the current global pandemic is the result of a biological weapon released by shadowy global elites, that celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres and Tom Hanks are secretly under house arrest for child trafficking, and that John F. Kennedy Jr. is actually alive, 21 years after his death. The movement has been amplified repeatedly by Trump allies and even the president himself. Online, QAnon followers have picked up on Trump and allies’ promotion of Q-related posts, citing them as proof that QAnon is real.

The long-term effect of this movement remains unclear, but journalists need to be ready to confront this issue when they are faced with it.

Travis View, one of the hosts of the QAnon Anonymous podcast, wonders what it will take for journalists to treat QAnon and its believers as a genuine threat to people’s safety.

“The question isn’t whether QAnon-connected murder, terrorism, and law enforcement scrutiny will cause the mainstream press to take QAnon as a serious extremist threat. We’re past that point,” he tells Media Matters. “The question is now how much QAnon-connected crime and death are required for the press to understand the dangers associated with QAnon.”

“Characterizing QAnon as merely a ‘pro-Trump conspiracy theory’ undersells it and misleads readers,” says View in a nod to how several news outlets have covered the movement. “I sense that most mainstream political reporters have a narrow grasp of extremism. They may understand the basic principles of white nationalism or salafi jihadism, but anything outside of that is invisible to them.”

For View, that means journalists have to make an effort to understand where candidates and their party backers stand on some of the more outlandish QAnon claims. View suggests asking Greene what she found “brilliant” about a cryptic Q post reading, “BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. A WEEK TO REMEMBER. DARK TO LIGHT. BLACKOUT NECESSARY. Q,” or why she showed interest in Rachel Chandler, a seemingly random woman QAnon followers have baselessly tried to connect to Jeffrey Epstein.

"Are the QAnon candidates at all concerned about the movement they’re associated with being called out as an extremist threat by the FBI?” asks View. “Even if these candidates no longer subscribe to QAnon beliefs, then there is journalistic value in discovering that as well.”

It’s easy to brush conspiracy theories off, but there could be long-term consequences to inaction in the fight against them. Yale philosophy professor and author of How Fascism Works Jason Stanley faults journalism’s normalcy bias for some of the surface-level failings on coverage of QAnon candidates.

“The U.S. media has a seemingly unyielding need to normalize the political process, especially when it comes to developments on the far right,” he tells Media Matters. “Pandering and minimizing extremist far-right conspiracy theories is presented as ‘balance’ and ‘objectivity’ -- sadly, this generosity is not extended to the left, where even mild forms of social-welfare democracy present in Canada and Europe are often presented as utopian fantasy. As Republican politicians become ever more extreme in their fantasies [such as] child sex rings run by the Democratic Party, we are yet again receiving lessons about how this false conception of journalistic objectivity leads to the destruction of our shared reality, rather than an improvement in our understanding of it.”

On Twitter, Stanley has expressed concern that the Trump administration and his supporters in Congress will try to “reverse engineer QAnon to make it seem plausible.” Trump’s ramblings about “Obamagate” would seem to be a part of this.

This wouldn’t be the first time Trump had taken a ludicrous claim and tried to reverse-engineer it into reality. After Trump baselessly accused President Barack Obama of illegally tapping his phone lines prior to the 2016 election, Trump used the power of his administration along with right-wing media to try to validate what he said. Theadministration’s decision to have John Durham conduct a wide-ranging investigation into the Mueller probe feeds into the QAnon “deep state” narrative.Should a large enough QAnon contingent come into power, it doesn’t seem to be a stretch to think that they would unleash a series of specious investigations and hold show trials to prosecute targets of the movement.

Some reporting on the QAnon movement has been great and should serve as examples to reporters who may not be familiar with it.

NBC News’ Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny stand out as examples of journalists who produce good, in-depth coverage of this conspiracy theory and corresponding movement. Similarly, the aforementioned QAnon Anonymous podcast as well as the work of Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch (and formerly of Media Matters) have been must-follows for anyone looking for a detailed breakdown of some of the movement’s biggest players and what they believe.

Will Sommer of The Daily Beast has provided excellent reporting related to the conspiracy theory, Adrienne LaFrance at The Atlantic published a remarkable long-form piece on the history of the movement, and The Guardian’s guk Julie Carrie Wong carried out an investigation about how Facebook has helped promote QAnon and other conspiracy theories.

Without a thorough understanding of internet culture and a familiarity with conspiracy theories, journalists may very well find themselves unprepared to cover Q-supporting politicians when they inevitably end up in the halls of Congress. Their ascension to those roles should in no way be an excuse to accept the conspiracy theory as anything less than a dangerous and deranged belief, but there’s reason to worry that will happen, as the eternal fight for balanced coverage in media often means accepting the far-right’s most outlandish beliefs as rational. Political journalists should spend time between now and November familiarizing themselves with this movement, because it’s not going away.

https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/sean-hannity-praises-and-coming-qanon-friendly-congressional-candidate

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boebert colo

https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/sean-hannity-praises-and-coming-qanon-friendly-congressional-candidate

fox News’ Sean Hannity hosted Republican congressional candidate Lauren Boebert on his TV show — providing a prime-time platform to a candidate who has supported the violence-linked QAnon conspiracy theory.

The QAnon movement was name-checked in a leaked May 2019 FBI document highlighting the emergence of conspiracy theory-fueled domestic terrorism threats, and devotees have committed a number of murders, engaged in armed standoffs, and made politically motivated death threats. QAnon followers have vandalized churches, taken police on high-speed chases, and in one case, conspired with fellow followers to commit kidnapping.

Boebert is one of dozens of current or former 2020 congressional candidates who have expressed support for the conspiracy theory. Many of them, like Boebert, will be on the ballot in November.

Boebert has explicitly praised QAnon, and furthermore appeared on another QAnon YouTube show. She's tried to back away from those statements after winning her primary election, and this week got a helping hand from Hannity. He introduced Boebert as an “up-and-coming Colorado congressional candidate” who was “taking on the Washington swamp.” Hannity portrayed Boebert as the victim of unfair media attacks.

Also: Boebert is touting the endorsement of white nationalist and COVID-19 conspiracy theorist Tom Tancredo.

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mma 720

GOP-

backed QAnon congressional candidate Lauren Boebert rallied with far-right militia at Colorado gun event

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