Boebert's Latest Try at Buttigieg Bashing Crashes, Burns
Fringe-right Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert may have thought she could gain some easy altitude by sniping at openly gay Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg when a glitch in the FAA system delayed and briefly grounded thousands of passenger planes, but Twitter quickly made it clear that it was her cheap points-seeking that wasn't going to fly.
The glitch "hit the FAA's Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) system, which is used to provide flight crews with real-time updates, including on potential hazards," Newsweek detailed.
The crisis provided Boebert a chance to display her leadership skills; she sent out a tweet that carped, "Every plane in America is currently grounded due to a system error. Mayor Pete, bravo."
The congresswoman went on to add: "This is what happens when you hire clueless liberals for jobs they aren't qualified to do."
Unsurprisingly, Mayor Pete was unfazed and the snafu, far from becoming the sort of cascading, days-long crisis that a software failure recently caused for Southwest Airlines, was swiftly resolved.
"Shortly before 9 a.m. ET on Wednesday, Buttigieg said on Twitter that the NOTAM system had been restored, and as a result, the 'ground stop' was lifted," Newsweek recounted.
Buttigieg took to the airwaves to keep America informed about the situation, telling MSNBC that while "Glitches or complications happen all the time... we can't allow them to ever lead to this level of disruption."
With an eye to improving the system, Buttigieg added: "We need to understand whether this reflects a systemic issue, and what would be required so that there's no single point of failure here."
But Buttigieg — who made a fashion statement out of rolled-up sleeves while on the campaign trail ahead of the 2020 presidential election — wasn't the only one at work: So were Twitter users who, LGBTQ Nation reported, were quick to call out the deep ironies contained in Boebert's snipe.
The site imparted that "Boebert — who dropped out of high school and got her GED just months before winning her first election in her 30s — faced criticism for calling the Rhodes Scholar and first out LGBTQ+ cabinet secretary 'clueless' and unqualified."
Moreover, "Several people mentioned that her gun-themed restaurant Shooters — which has since closed — gave 80 people food poisoning when they sold food at a rodeo without a license in 2017," the site said. "Pulled pork sliders that weren't stored at the appropriate temperature were found to be the culprit."
Check out some of Twitter's responses to Boebert's loftless gibe: