New security measures at the Capitol included metal detectors at the entrance to the House chamber Tuesday night, and many Republicans responded with predictable entitled temper tantrums. Or, as freshman Republican Rep. Peter Meijer put it, “I am sorry some of my colleagues are being assholes.”
Meijer was not exaggerating about the assholes part. His fellow new Republican member, Rep. Lauren Boebert, set off the metal detector and then refused to have her purse inspected, leading to a standoff with police. Boebert has bragged about planning to carry her Glock on the grounds of the Capitol, and her support for the insurrectionists who broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6 gives her Democratic colleagues good reason to worry that she intends them harm.
Reporters witnessed groups of Republican House members simply walking around the metal detectors, or setting off the alarms and just pushing through. In one case, HuffPost’s Matt Fuller tweeted, “Another member—I believe it was Russ Fulcher—just pushed his way through. He went through the metal detector, set it off, ran into a cop, and then pushed his way past her.”
Respect for police just oozed off these members (that was sarcasm): “Reps. Markwayne Mullin and Steve Womack erupted at Capitol Police as they were forced to go through the mags. Womack shouted ‘I was physically restrained!’ And Mullin said ‘it’s my constitutional right’ and ‘they cannot stop me,’” CNN’s Manu Raju tweeted.
Rep. Greg Steube took to the House floor to call the metal detectors an “atrocity” and “appalling.”
”Take note, America,” he said. “This is what you have to look forward to in the Joe Biden administration.” And that’s where the point that several Democrats made comes into play.
”Do these people not understand that literally everyone else has to go through metal detectors to get in here?” Rep. Don Beyer tweeted. “Average people do not get to bring guns into the United States Capitol in normal times. Get over yourselves.”
Rep. Cori Bush laid it out on MSNBC: ”First of all, we're talking about your job. Let's just look at it from the most basic level. If you work at McDonald's, you have to wear the uniform or you're not working today! Wherever you are, when you're told this is what you have to do, this is what you have to do or you're not working. I don't know, have they ever had a job before?”
She continued: “Also, how do you get on a plane? You have to go and say this is against your rights? Do you rush through and not go through the metal detectors before you get on the plane? This is them trying to push the limits as far as they can.”
All of us encounter times in our lives we have to go through metal detectors or other security. Many, many high school students in this country encounter that every single day. But these Republican members of Congress are so entitled and spoiled and in love with their sense of themselves as victims that they think they’re above it—even in the wake of a major attack on their workplace, with more violence threatened.
