Last we checked in on the Reality TV scandal of Rep. Lauren Boebert (R) of Colorado she was shown to have straight up lied when she denied vaping at a performance of Beetlejuice in Denver and refusing to stop after the pregnant woman behind her asked her to. Now it gets better, or worse, depending on your point of view. Over the weekend, a new snippet of video of Boebert at the performance started circulating which appears to show Boebert’s friend aggressively fondling her breasts. I’m not even sure what to call it. He doesn’t so much seem like he’s feeling her up as trying to see how big her boobs are. Weak game, if nothing else. Meanwhile, Boebert … well, lets say the video shows her rhythmically massaging the man’s crotch. And yes, I’m trying to keep this family friendly but look what I have to work with! Judge me on a curve.
In any case, Boebert and her friend are essentially dry humping at Beetlejuice and it makes it seem increasingly likely that Boebert wasn’t booted for just being a freak and hooping and hollering but because she and her guy were getting it on at the performance. Indeed, she seems to make a point of rubbing other attendees’ faces in it. You’ll remember her earlier tiff with the pregnant woman sitting behind her who asked her to stop vaping. If you watch the new clip, she appears to pointedly look back at the pregnant woman while she and the guy are going at it, almost like it’s partly in retaliation for the vaping comment.
I’m no shamer or prude. Embrace the joys the world offers, I say. But certainly some cognizance and respect for the feelings of those around us is warranted. In another nice touch, Boebert’s boyfriend, Quinn Gallagher, owns a gay-friendly Aspen bar which regularly hosts drag shows. So there’s that too.
Yet, when I looked at this new clip I was at first suspicious because only part of it appears to be in the surveillance footage released by the local news station last week. It looked like maybe one piece of video had been smooshed up with another or one piece was run on repeat several times. This is accentuated by the fact that it’s infrared surveillance footage and everything has a kind of ghostly look to it, which maybe be appropriate for Beetlejuice. On top of all this the antics are so comically over the top I was still a bit stunned that it actually happened.
In my never ending search for the truth, I went down a rabbit hole of thinking I’d been scammed by some deep fake circulating on Twitter. But the video was vindicated. The clip first published by local Denver TV station, Channel 9, was just a kind of key moments. Highlights, if you will. They published much longer portions on Youtube, one showing the antics during the performance and a second showing all the ins and outs of what happened while the theater employees were removing Boebert and her boyfriend from the premises. It’s like a trailer. You still need to see the whole movie.
As you might have guessed the latest revelations forced Boebert to shift gears to a much more traditional crisis management type message. The ‘sucks to be you/I plead guilty to having fun’ message from last week was replaced by a more fulsome apology. Boebert said “there’s no perfect blueprint for going through a public and difficult divorce” and that her antics at the theater “fell short of my values.” True enough, I guess, but if she was looking for the perfect blueprint she apparently got distracted. As for lying about the vaping, she blamed the excitement of the moment for her lapse of memory.
“Whether it was the excitement of seeing a much-anticipated production or the natural anxiety of being in a new environment, I genuinely did not recall vaping that evening when I discussed the night’s events with my campaign team while confirming my enthusiasm for the musical. Regardless of my belief, it’s clear now that was not accurate. It was not my or my campaign’s intention to mislead, but we do understand the nature of how this looks.”
Other damning details emerged.
As she was led out of the theater, Boebert pulled out the traditional “do you know who I am” threat. She claimed falsely that she was on the board of the movie theater and that she was a friend of Denver’s mayor. The whole series of bonkers claims are even sillier when you remember that Boebert’s district isn’t Denver but the world aware Western Slope.
The first apology was followed by a second last night on far-right news network OAN in which she apologized for being “maybe overtly animated.” “I was laughing, I was singing, having a fantastic time, was told to kinda settle it down a little bit, which I did, but then, my next slip up was taking a picture,” she said during her appearance. “I was a little too eccentric … I’m on the edge of a lot of things.”
If Boebert were Marjorie Greene or Matt Gaetz probably none of this would matter since they and virtually every other member of the Freedom Caucus hails from heavily Republican districts which are unwinnable for a Democrat. But Boebert hails from a conservative leaning but still closely divided district. She won reelection in 2022 by only a few hundred votes by an underfunded opponent. Democrats won’t make the same mistake again in 2024.