Lauren Boebert mocked Pete Buttigieg for wearing safety gear. Twitter was appalled.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) spent the last two weeks attacking out Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg for not yet visiting the site of the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment.

And now that he visited, Boebert mocked him for wearing safety gear like a dork.

Related:

Lauren Boebert asks Pete Buttigieg for $33 million after insulting him repeatedly

She didn’t hesitate to launch homophobic attacks on the out Transportation Secretary and his husband, but now that she wants some of that cash for her district, she’s trying to play nice.

Boebert has not kept her contempt for Buttigieg a secret since becoming a member of Congress, and she repeatedly attacked him for not visiting the site of the train derailment… even though Buttigieg’s predecessor never visited any train derailment sites either.

On Thursday, Buttigieg went to East Palestine, but instead of praise, Boebert found another reason to attack him. She retweeted an image from self-styled “Comedians & conservatives” the Hodge twins of Buttigieg in personal protective equipment. The Hodge twins wrote: “Mayor Pete out here in a hard hat, safety glasses, and damn orange vest,” and added laughing emojis.

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“Just another white, male construction worker,” Boebert wrote with the eye-rolling emoji.

Just another white, male construction worker 🙄 https://t.co/iQ5t6NOw1S

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) February 23, 2023

Boebert has yet to tweet anything else about Buttigieg’s visit, despite tweeting numerous times about his lack of visit up to yesterday.

On February 13, she tweeted: “Pete Buttigieg is nowhere to be found YET AGAIN as toxic chemicals are spewing out in East Palestine, Ohio after a train crash.”

“Pete Buttigieg has finally emerged today,” she tweeted the same day. “Not a single comment about the train crash in Ohio.” The next day, she declared Buttigieg’s presidential aspirations “dead.”

“It’s been nearly two weeks and Mayor Pete has yet to go to East Palestine, Ohio,” she tweeted on February 16. “Perhaps they should consider changing the name of their town to Ukraine if they want the Biden Regime to pay better attention.”

On February 20, she linked a video of a YouTuber who gave some money to people in East Palestine and declared that the YouTuber “is doing more for East Palestine than Pete Buttigieg has.” Two days later, she called him “absent on the job.”

“If Pete Buttigieg’s job is to ignore his job, then he’s really doing a great job!” she tweeted late Wednesday, after his visit to East Palestine had been announced in the media.

On Twitter, people weren’t impressed with Boebert’s choice to make fun of Buttigieg for wearing safety gear.

I’m so sick of you. People are required to wear safety gear. You are such a clown. Why not try something productive like shutting your mouth and being a part of a solution instead of being on social media, trying to stay relevant

— Amy Weber (@TherealAmyWeber) February 24, 2023

So first you criticize him for not going to Palestine, and now you criticize him for wearing required safety gear? He does more work in a day than you do in a year. #GOPBetrayedAmerica

— Jane Feldman (@jtfdenver) February 23, 2023

Actually it may be required safety wear for the site, something Trump would be afraid to put on because his Lee Press on Hair might come off in the helmet.

— James D. (@OCA_Mens) February 23, 2023

You guys are awful. So awful.

— Yasmine Mary, ARNP-FNP-C (@yazzy1967) February 23, 2023

Everyone on-site was in PPE. I’m a concrete pump operator. I pumped thousand of yards of concrete on the Central 70 project, in Denver, overseen by Union Pacific and CDOT. Their safety regulations are uncompromising, during construction and/or accident investigation. pic.twitter.com/UhTdY0ynUF

— Delmar Cooper (@DelmarCooper2) February 23, 2023

I’m a white, male construction worker and appreciate Secretary Pete’s respect for PPE. pic.twitter.com/DLnSI3l3pu

— Sparky in the Bluegrass (@Kentucky_Sparky) February 23, 2023

He's doing his job. You're here doing this whatever this is. 🙄

— Michael Petty (@5MilesHigher) February 23, 2023

He’s a true patriot🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸. pic.twitter.com/hfybNTuREr

— David (@david_a_garcia) February 24, 2023

Lauren, that is called PPE. It’s required by OSHA to be on a job site. How much money did you get for PPE?

— Brawndo (the thirst mutilator) (@majik8ball) February 23, 2023

There were train derailments when Trump was president. People died in some of them (unlike this one).

Elaine Chao – Trump's Transportation Secretary – didn't visit any of those derailment sites. Not once.

— Jen (@jenminicooper) February 23, 2023

This isn’t the first time Boebert has made her opposition to safety gear known. In July 2021, she reportedly threw a mask at a House staffer after they asked her to wear a mask. In January 2022, she was fined $500 by the House Ethics Committee for not following Congress’s mask mandate.

Boebert’s comments may have been a reaction to statements Buttigieg made at a recent conference where he said, “We have heard way too many stories from generations past of infrastructure where you got a neighborhood, often a neighborhood of color, that finally sees the project come to them, but everyone in the hard hats on that project, looking like doing the good paying jobs, don’t look like they came from anywhere near the neighborhood.”

Many conservatives – like rightwing podcaster Joe Rogan – characterized his comments as “about how there’s too many white people working in construction sites,” even though Buttigieg didn’t say that.