Colorado lawmaker Lawrence Boebert interrupts Bidens State of Union address

United States President
Joe Biden was briefly interrupted during his State of the Union address Tuesday,
an address that focused largely on the crisis in Ukraine and the US economy
when he was interrupted by Republican lawmaker Lawrence Boebert of Colorado.  

At a specific
moment during the address, Biden paid tribute to soldiers who were sickened by
burn pits, including his son Beau Biden, who died from brain cancer in 2015. A
burn pit is a part of a military base where all waste produced is disposed of
by burning.  

“Our troops in
Iraq and Afghanistan have faced many dangers – one being stationed at bases and
breathing in toxic smoke from burn pits,” Biden said.

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“Many of you have
been there. I’ve been in and out of Afghanistan and Iran over 40 times that
incinerated waste, the waste of war – medical and hazardous material, jet fuel,
and so much more – and they came home, many of the world’s fittest and best
trained warriors in the world, never the same. Headaches. Numbness. Dizziness.
A cancer that would put them in a flag draped coffin. I know.”

At this very
moment, an agitated Boebert interrupted the address and said, “You put them
there – 13 of them.” Boebert’s comment was apparently a reference to the 13
soldiers killed during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.
However, the Colorado lawmaker was quickly shushed.

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Biden went on: “One
of those soldiers was my son Major Beau Biden. I don’t know for sure if the
burn pit that he lived near, that his hooch was near in Iraq, and before that
in Kosovo, is the cause of his brain cancer. But I’m committed to finding out
everything we can.”

Disruptions in the
State of Union address have off late become regular fare. In 2009, Republican
Rep. Joe Wilson shouted, “you lie,” to President Barack Obama. Eleven years
later, Nancy Pelosi ripped up a copy of Donald Trump’s speech in course of his
address.