Lauren Boebert apologizes again for ‘maybe overtly animated’ behavior at theater
Lauren Boebert has issued a second apology for her now infamous theatre date which saw her get ejected from watching a Beetlejuice: The Musical performance after she openly vaped in the audience, groped her companion and was graphically felt up in kind.
In an interview on Sunday with the conservative One America News Network, the far-right Colorado congresswoman attributed the behavior – recorded on security camera footage – to what she described as her being “maybe overtly animated”. Boebert, 36, thus implied that her extrovertedness had somehow fused with a stage production that the New York Times reviewed as “a jaw-dropping funhouse”.
“I was laughing, I was singing, having a fantastic time, was told to kinda settle it down a little bit, which I did, but then, my next slip up was taking a picture,” she told the network about her date a week earlier. “I was a little too eccentric … I’m on the edge of a lot of things.”
Her remarks added to a written apology offered on Friday in which she said she was “truly sorry for the unwanted attention my … evening in Denver [on Sunday, 10 September] has brought to the community” and that her actions she “simply fell short” of her values.
Meanwhile, additional information about Boebert’s companion to Beetlejuice – whom she has been dating for months – introduced even more complexity to an already perplexing picture of their night out.
Her date, 46-year-old Quinn Gallagher, was a Democrat-supporting owner of a bar that hosts LGBTQ+ and drag events in the ski town of Aspen, Colorado. The events included a women’s party for Aspen Gay Ski Week and a Winter Wonderland Burlesque & Drag Show. Boebert has been an outspoken critic of drag shows, as evidenced by a June 2022 post on the social media platform now known as X which read: “Take your children to Church, not drag bars.”
The US House member was ejected alongside Gallagher from the Buell theatre after being asked to stop vaping, taking pictures and groping each other during the performance of the family-friendly Beetlejuice, according to reporting and video obtained by local Denver news outlet 9News.
Criticism against Boebert has only intensified since her first apology, with some conservative commentators spending the weekend calling her out.
“Totally embarrassing bimbo,” conservative pundit Ann Coulter wrote on X. Jenna Ellis, a former attorney for ex-president Donald Trump, called the behavior “embarrassing and disrespectful”.
According to a Buell theatre security report obtained by 9News Denver, Boebert and Gallagher had been “vaping, singing, causing a disturbance”. Boebert reportedly asked “Do you know who I am?” when they were asked to leave.
Her first apology since then blamed her “public and difficult divorce” for her behavior. In May, she filed to divorce her husband of nearly two decades, Jayson.
Though Sunday marked Boebert’s second apology for her Beetlejuice antics, the comments marked the third time the congresswoman had addressed the episode.
Initially, her campaign manager Drew Sexton told the Associated Press that “congresswoman Lauren Boebert is indeed a supporter of the performing arts (gasp!)”.
He added that Boebert “pleads guilty to singing along, laughing and enjoying herself”.
