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Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert is standing by the controversial comment she made about Texas Rep. Al Green after he disrupted President Donald Trump’s recent speech to Congress.
Green was kicked out of the House chamber at the start of Trump’s presidential address on March 4, when he shook his cane and shouted "No mandate!" in protest of the president.
House Speaker Mike Johnson warned Green, 77, to take his seat, but the Democrat refused, leading to his removal.
In a March 8 interview with Real America’s Voice, Boebert, 38, expressed her outrage at the incident, using language that was quickly blasted as offensive.
“For him to go and shake his pimp cane at President Trump was absolutely abhorrent,” she said at the time.
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After receiving backlash for the comment, Boebert doubled down in a second interview with the conservative news outlet, saying, “I stand by it.”
She fired back specifically at Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan’s condemnation of the remarks as “disparaging, derogatory, and racist toward another colleague.”
Boebert, a Republican representative from Colorado, responded, “Maybe 'Houla-who' is really the racist here. Are only Blacks pimps? Is that what I’m hearing? Are there no cisgender, white pimps in America?”
She also called into question Green’s use of the cane, saying, “I have never seen Al Green actually use his cane as a support to walk.”
“I have seen him shake it for years all throughout the Capitol during any meeting that I’ve ever been present with him in,” she continued. “If that gold-plated cane isn’t a pimp cane, I don’t know what is.”
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Boebert’s comments about Green’s “abhorrent” protest called into question her own past interruptions during presidential speeches.
In 2022, President Joe Biden was heckled during his State of the Union address when he brought up his late son, Beau Biden, an Iraq War veteran who died of brain cancer in 2015. As Biden addressed concerns over the effects of chemical warfare on veterans’ health, Boebert yelled, “You put them there!”
She also joined Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene and other Republican colleagues in interrupting Biden’s 2022 speech by standing and chanting, “Build the wall!”
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Of the comparisons, Boebert told Real America’s Voice, “You had some folks on the left trying to come out early and defend this behavior and compare it to an image of Marjorie Taylor Greene and myself, who were chanting ‘Build the wall’ while all other Republicans were chanting the same phrase."
"They just got that one image and acted like we completely disrupted the State of the Union,” she said in her defense.
“But Al Green was given multiple opportunities to stand down, to sit down, to behave, to show decorum,” Boebert added. “And he did not.”