Lauren Boebert blames everything but herself as midterms defeat looms - The Independent

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Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, who appears to be in real danger of losing her seat as midterms ballot-counting continues in her district, has argued that the electorate was “played by the markets.”

As it stands Friday morning, Democrat Eileen Laubacher is narrowly ahead in the too-close-to-call fight for Colorado’s 4th congressional district with 186,218 votes, or 48.79 percent, with Boebert in second on 182,856, or 47.91 percent. An outcome is expected later today.

Interviewed by NewsNation’s Blake Burman late Thursday, the three-term MAGA congresswoman, 39, said that if she ultimately goes on to lose to Laubacher, 58, a retired Navy rear admiral, it would not be down to any one factor.

“There are so many different variables, and I’m going to start with policy,” she told Burman.

“I’m a member of the House Freedom Caucus, and we were the ones that were having these floor debates when bad bills would come to the floor or deals that were promised weren’t followed through with.

“We were fighting on FISA to have warrants for surveilling American citizens,” she said, invoking the congressional debate over Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and its enabling spying.

“We wanted fair elections, and there’s so much that we just weren’t heard on. We wanted to ban insider trading for members of Congress.”

Boebert went on to describe last week’s catastrophic results for Republicans – which saw their rival Democrats reclaim the majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate with a stunning series of wins from Michigan to Kansas, Texas and Mississippi – as “absolutely a cry that the American people do not want corruption from anyone, any time.”

More surprisingly, she claimed that voters had been “played by the markets” in the run-up to Election Day, prompting Burman to seek clarification on what she meant.

“I have gas that is under $3 a gallon in my district now, when everything was closer to $6 a gallon just over a week ago,” the representative claimed, seemingly alleging the markets had been fixed to make President Donald Trump’s administration look bad without offering evidence.

“There needs to be some accountability there. Also, we had legislation that would pause exports for diesel. We had legislation even to suspend the federal gas tax. It’s not a lot, but it’s something to show that we do care about the American people’s wallets.”

She was also asked in the same interview about Vice President JD Vance’s claim that the Iran war cost Republicans at the polls, which she did not disagree with but offered only a very lukewarm response to the idea that Vance could be their party’s next presidential candidate, saying only that it was “possible” he could be on the ballot in 2028 but that the midterms had been a rebuke to “this Republican Party.”

On Tuesday, Boebert was interviewed on the steps of the Capitol by MeidasTouch reporter Pablo Manriquez and made the same argument about her party’s policy and messaging weaknesses before saying: “I always think we’re too moderate.”

Asked for specific policy areas to which that might apply, she admitted to frustration over the war. Boebert has previously complained about the conflict, only to vote against congressional measures aimed at ending it, dismissing them as purely symbolic gestures.

Throughout her tenure on Capitol Hill, the congresswoman has established herself as one of the most visible members of the GOP’s MAGA wing and was once labeled a leader of the “extreme MAGA movement” by former president Joe Biden.

She has also regularly clashed with her own side’s House leadership, including former speakers Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson.

Although Trump did endorse her days before the election as a “MAGA Warrior,” he also called her “dumb” and “weak-minded” earlier this year when she joined rebel Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie, a vocal Trump critic, in his call for the release of the Epstein files last year.