Lauren Boebert criticizes Trump after he issued the first two vetoes of his second term
President Donald Trump on Monday vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have guaranteed clean water for thousands of Coloradans, prompting Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) to question whether the move was “political retaliation” for her outspoken stance on Jeffrey Epstein’s files.
“And I sincerely hope that this veto has nothing to do with political retaliation for exposing corruption and demanding accountability,” Boebert said Tuesday in a statement shared on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, by Denver TV news anchor Kyle Clark.
He continued: “Americans deserve leadership that puts people above politics.”
Boebert sponsored the bill, formally titled End the Arkansas Valley Pipeline Act, which would have funded construction of a long-delayed pipeline for drinking water that would affect about 50,000 people in communities within the Arkansas River Valley.
The MAGA darling has consistently supported Trump’s “America First” mantra and his false claims of voter fraud in 2020, but broke with him over his refusal to release all files on Epstein, the late child predator who once called Trump his “closest friend.”
Boebert backed a Trump anti-discharge petition in November to force a vote on the release of Justice Department records, becoming one of 218 required signatories that led to the Epstein Records Transparency Act, which gave the Justice Department 30 days to release those records.
She was later taken to an emergency meeting at the White House, and later posted a cryptic emoji on social media and thanked unnamed officials “for meeting.” Boebert on Tuesday appeared to search for alternative answers as to why Trump vetoed her bill.
“President Trump decided to veto a bipartisan and completely uncontroversial bill that passed unanimously in both the House and Senate,” he said. “Why? Because nothing says ‘America First’ like denying drinking water to 50,000 people in southeastern Colorado.”
The congresswoman went on to note that many of those people voted “enthusiastically” for Trump “in all three elections,” adding with clear frustration that she “must have missed the rally” where Trump “personally promised to derail critical water infrastructure projects.”
Saúl Loeb/News/Getty Images
The president claimed in a letter to Congress on Tuesday that the project is an unacceptable “taxpayer donation” that would be too “expensive.” The Congressional Budget Office previously estimated it would cost the federal government less than $500,000.
“The bad thing is, I thought the campaign was about cutting costs and cutting bureaucracy,” Boebert said Tuesday. “But hey, if this administration wants to leave its legacy by blocking projects that provide water to rural Americans, that’s up to them.”
Trump vetoed another bill this week that had overwhelming bipartisan support.
The Miccosukee Reserved Area Amendments Act would have added a small village to a section of Florida land controlled by the Native American tribe of the same name, and would have required the Department of the Interior to help protect structures on the land from flooding.
Trump stated in his letter that “it is not the responsibility of the Federal Government” to do so.
He did not mention that the Miccosukees legally challenged his authority to build “Alligator Alcatraz” nearby, and that earlier this year they successfully argued that the immigration detention center should have been subject to federal environmental reviews.