AOC Blasted Rep. Boebert's Reaction to Colorado LGBTQ+ Club Shooting

"You don't get to 'thoughts and prayers' your way out of this. Look inward and change."

Credit: Getty Images
Credit: Getty Images

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) blasted fellow congresswoman Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) for issuing a "thoughts and prayers" response to the mass shooting at an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs that killed 5 people.

Boebert, who is a gun enthusiast and has spread anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric in the past, called the shooting "absolutely awful" and offered "prayers" and called for the "lawless violence" to end.

Within a few hours, AOC responded, calling out Boebert for her response on Twitter. The New York congresswomen said Boebert "played a major role in elevating anti-LGBT+ hate rhetoric and anti-trans lies." She continued by writing, "You don't get to 'thoughts and prayers' your way out of this. Look inward and change."

Boebert, who won re-election this month by an extremely slim margin, has been outspoken about her anti-marriage equality stance in the past. "My marriage between my husband is really between me and God, not between me and the government,' she said in an interview with conservative media figure Charlie Kirk. 'They have attacked our institutions. They have weakened the nuclear family and undermined masculinity and even femininity."

She has also spread lies about LGBTQ+ people "grooming" children. In a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate and the Human Rights Campaign, Boebert's Twitter was found to be the third-most influential account on the platform in the spreading of the "grooming" narrative, behind fellow Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and "anti-woke" author James Lindsay.

The shooting in Colorado Springs left 5 dead and 25 injured. Police have taken the 22-year-old suspect into custody.