“Squad” member Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mass., blasted Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., this week as an example of “entrenched white supremacy” and demanded that she be stripped of her committee assignments over a joke she made about Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.
“If we’re serious about tackling the systems of entrenched white supremacy that stain every fiber of this country,” she said during a press conference on Wednesday, “then we need to start right here, right in this Capitol.
“We need to start with this lying, Islamophobic, race-baiting, violence-inciting, white supremacist sentiment-spreading, Christmas tree gun-toting elected official, who is out here straight-up calling her colleagues terrorists,” Bush said of Boebert.
.@CoriBush: “If we’re serious about tackling the systems of entrenched white supremacy that stain every fiber of this country, then we need to start right here, right in this Capitol. […] Lauren Boebert is a danger to […] her fellow members of Congress.” pic.twitter.com/Gi0CQtbFUI
— The Hill (@thehill) December 9, 2021
Boebert came under fire earlier this month after she made a joke at a campaign event about how Omar might be considered a security threat. She said that, once, when she was getting into an elevator with Omar, a Capitol Police officer came running towards them. “Well, she doesn’t have a backpack,” Boebert quipped. “We should be fine.”
Boebert apologized publicly to Omar and clarified that her remarks were not intended to offend anyone, but Bush and other leftist members of the “Squad” have insisted that Boebert is a “danger to this country” and to “the Muslim staffers that work here.”
“She is a danger to her fellow members of Congress,’ Bush claimed. “Removing her from her committees is the least leadership can do to protect every employee, member and visitor of this body.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has not said whether she will hold a vote to strip Boebert of her committee assignments, despite condemning Boebert personally.