"The past few days have been difficult and humbling, and I'm truly sorry for the unwanted attention my Sunday evening in Denver has brought to the community," Boebert said in a statement Friday night. "While none of my actions or words as a private citizen that night were intended to be malicious or meant to cause harm, the reality is they did and I regret that."
Boebert, who can be seen on the video touching and carrying on with her date while sitting in the middle of a crowded theater, blamed what she called her "public and difficult divorce" for her behavior and said, "I simply fell short of my values on Sunday."
Boebert, a mother of four boys who likes to show off pictures of her new grandchild to colleagues in Congress, said she "genuinely did not recall vaping that evening" when she told her campaign to issue a statement denying she had done so. She said she would have to work hard to earn back trust from voters in her district.
It may be a heavy lift for Boebert, who won reelection in 2022 by just 546 votes.
If her too-close-for-comfort reelection campaign was a message that Colorado voters didn't like her brand of disruptive politics, she hasn't appeared to have received it. Since January, she has often acted in ways many Republicans view as detrimental to keeping control of the House in 2024 and to her keeping her seat.
In June, Boebert tried to force a vote on articles of impeachment against President Biden, claiming his immigration policies constituted high crimes and misdemeanors. Some of her colleagues called the move "crazy," and it was eventually shunted off to committees for further study.
Boebert distinguished herself during the fraught speaker's race in January as one of the most committed holdouts against Representative Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, milking the moment for maximum Fox News exposure. In the House, she has cultivated an abrasive public persona, sometimes heckling her Democratic colleagues in the halls of the Capitol and largely ignoring reporters' questions, except to loudly proclaim at times, "I love President Trump!"
The behavior has also earned a cult following on the right. Boebert has a national base of fans that enjoys her disruptive antics and extreme rhetoric.
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