President Joe Biden sharply criticized Rep. Lauren Boebert in her Colorado congressional district on Wednesday afternoon, attacking the Republican directly for several minutes during his 23-minute long speech. It came as she hurled sharp criticism at him throughout the day on social media.
The president spoke at CS Wind in the afternoon after touring the wind turbine company’s plant in Pueblo, which is in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District. He praised CS’s plan to hire hundreds of new workers and was quick to point out that funding from the infrastructure law that his administration pushed through helped to make it possible.
“(Boebert), along with every single Republican colleague, voted against the infrastructure law that made these investments in jobs possible and that’s not hyperbole, that’s a fact,” he said.
Biden paused for a moment when he first mentioned Boebert’s name. He then made the sign of the cross and smiled at the laughs that elicited. He said Boebert voted, first against the infrastructure law, and then to repeal key parts of the law. Boebert has repeatedly defended her voting record on the bill and called the law an example of “Green New Deal extremism.”
The attacks come a little less than a year before the 2024 general election. In 2022, Boebert was re-elected after narrowly defeating Democratic challenger Adam Frisch. Frisch is actively campaigning in the district in hopes of winning the seat next time around, but he didn’t appear onstage with Biden.
Frisch’s absence on Wednesday came under criticism from Boebert, who referred to her 2022 challenger as “Aspen Adam.” Frisch’s previous political experience includes serving on the Aspen City Council.
“(Frisch) is so scared of Biden’s sinking poll #’s that he declined to join him on the campaign trail in Pueblo today,” she tweeted. “If Aspen Adam won’t show up for his President and Pueblo, how can Third District voters trust he’ll show up for them?”
Biden referred to Boebert in his speech as “one of the leaders of (the) extreme MAGA movement.”
“She called (the infrastructure) law a massive failure,” said Biden, who then addressed employees of CS Wind, asking, “you all know you’re part of a massive failure?”
“Tell that to the 850 Coloradans that are getting new jobs in Pueblo and CS Wind thanks to this law,” he said. “Tell that to the local economy that’s going to benefit from these investments.”
Boebert was active on social media on Wednesday with a series of political jabs directed at Biden and Frisch. On X, formerly known as Twitter, she wrote that Biden came to Colorado after taking a break from “his lavish vacations” — a reference to his visit to Nantucket for Thanksgiving last week. She tweeted that Biden should be coming to Colorado to “apologize for his all out war on on fossil fuels and his Green New Deal agenda which have cost the great people of Colorado’s 3rd District dearly.”