Lauren Boebert has been elected to Congress. (EMILY KASK/AFP via Getty)
A Republican lawmaker is being skewered online for a bizarre and abrupt broadside against people sharing their pronouns.
Colorado representative Lauren Boebert, a deeply hard-right gun activist, is part of a small but high-decibel bloc of GOP firebrands that tout pro-Donald Trump QAnon conspiracies – notching upsets on both sides.
So it came as no surprise when Boebert, whose Twitter header is a photograph of a gun holster, decided on Tuesday night (25 May) to tweet, for whatever reason: “My pronoun is ‘patriot’.”
My pronoun is “Patriot”.
— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) May 25, 2021
Yeah, we’re not kidding. She seriously tweeted this. We don’t know either.
But it was safe to say that, well, absolutely nobody was laughing along to Boebert’s barbed jab at LGBT+ people.
Patriot is a noun. You are dumb as a rock, offensive and inexcusable. You are an embarrassment to congress. And that is putting it politely. https://t.co/WvbJ3Y56uN
— Toby Berry טובי (@TobyBerry6325) May 26, 2021
— 🇺🇸 John *1/6 Commission NOW!* Wright (@TheWrightJohn) May 26, 2021
No, @laurenboebert, you’re just an ignorant (adjective) dumbass (noun) who is an affront (noun) to our Founding Fathers’ dream of an enlightened (adjective) America. You (pronoun) are a traitor (noun) who betrays (verb) all who fought and died for freedom (noun). https://t.co/nYfaPehiZM pic.twitter.com/jb66Ha2RLd
— Bryan Dawson (@BryanDawsonUSA) May 26, 2021
Patriot is a noun. https://t.co/3TbafqTiP4
— Travis Akers (@travisakers) May 26, 2021
First- patriot is not a pronoun.
Second- there are many words to describe you… and patriot is not one of them.
Idiot is the first word that comes to mind. https://t.co/KHs2fQDF9N
— CJ 🌊 (@CJ_isnowblue) May 26, 2021
Lauren Boebert, the owner of Shooters Grill in Rifle, has over the years sought to position herself as something of a rabble-rouser.
She refused to close her restaurant, where she encourages staff to openly carry guns, during the throes of the pandemic. With the Garfield County sheriff being forced to obtain a cease-and-desist order against her to make her shutter.
Toppling her Democratic rival Diane Mitsch Bush in the Third Congressional District, the member of Congress has used her thumping platform to, er, complain about “illegal aliens“, tweet “Trump was right” into the void and rally against trans rights.
She was thrown her weight behind the Republican-fuelled drive across dozens of state legislatures to railroad reviled bans on trans athletes taking part in school sports.
In a particular flashpoint, the Glock-packing politician staged a press conference outside the Capitol complex as Congress voted on the Equality Act – a sprawling piece of legislation that would introduce long-sought LGBT+ protections nationwide.
To Boebert, “there is nothing about equality in that act”. “If anything, it’s the supremacy for gays, lesbians, and transves-hikes,” she said.
And, in case you had any misconceptions about her priorities, she bravely fought against, er Spongebob Squarepants after she criticised Nickelodeon for hinting that the iconic children’s character was asexual.