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Here’s the Video of Boebert Getting Kicked Out of Beetlejuice for Being a Nuisance

The Colorado representative flipped off security as she was escorted out of the musical.

Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for Congressional Integrity Project

Representative Lauren Boebert was escorted out of a theater in Denver on Sunday for “causing a disturbance” during the performance—and now we have the video footage.

Employees at the Buell Theatre asked two patrons to leave the evening performance of Beetlejuice after their behavior sparked three complaints from other attendees. An incident report says the pair were vaping, singing along, recording the show, and generally disrupting the performance, The Denver Post reported Tuesday.

While the venue’s report did not name Boebert or identify the person she was with, her campaign office confirmed she was escorted from the show. Security footage from inside the Buell shows venue security officials asking Boebert and a man to leave the show and then escorting them out of the theater.

It is not clear who the man with Boebert is. She filed for divorce from her husband earlier this year.

In the video, Boebert is seen initially refusing to leave her seat. One of the ushers had to threaten to call city police before the pair agreed to leave, according to the venue’s incident report.

Police were called and stayed in the theater lobby until Boebert and her companion had left. While they were being escorted out, the pair told employees “stuff like ‘do you know who I am,’ ‘I am on the board’ [and] ‘I will be contacting the mayor,’” the report said. The video also shows Boebert giving the finger to security as she is being escorted out.

Boebert’s campaign manager confirmed that the representative had been asked to leave the show, but he denied that she had been vaping. He also confirmed that Boebert had used her phone to take a photo of the performance but said she didn’t know that wasn’t allowed. Typically, theaters announce before shows begin that photos and video of any kind are prohibited.

Elon Musk Almost Hired Rudy Giuliani Until He Met Him in Person

Rudy Giuliani was too sleazy even for Elon Musk.

Rudy Giuliani
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Elon Musk had wanted to recruit Rudy Giuliani in the early 2000s to help turn PayPal into a bank, but the outgoing New York mayor was too skeezy even for Musk, according to a new biography of the Tesla founder.

Musk co-founded PayPal in 2000. He originally wanted to name the company X and dreamed it would disrupt the finance sector (sound familiar?). Walter Isaacson’s new biography, Elon Musk, which was released Tuesday, reports that Musk and investor Michael Moritz flew to New York soon after to see if they could recruit Giuliani to act as their political fixer and banking policy adviser.

When Musk and Moritz met with Giuliani, “it was like walking into a mob scene,” Moritz says in Isaacson’s biography. Giuliani “was surrounded by goonish confidantes. He didn’t have any idea whatsoever about Silicon Valley, but he and his henchmen were eager to line their pockets.”

“They asked for 10% of the company, and that was the end of the meeting. ‘This guy occupies a different planet,’ Musk told Moritz.”

Giuliani went on to become known as “America’s mayor” after shepherding New York City through the wake of the 9/11 attacks. He then unsuccessfully ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and eventually became Donald Trump’s personal attorney. While he initially amassed millions as a lawyer, consultant, and public speaker, his finances have been struggling of late.

Trump has refused to pay Giuliani’s legal fees, forcing Giuliani to fly to Mar-a-Lago and beg for Trump to pay up. Giuliani is also struggling to pay his own legal bills as he battles an indictment in Georgia for trying to overturn the 2020 election results.

BP Has Reached Peak Looney

The petroleum giant is parting ways with the CEO who was supposed to shepherd the firm to the future.

Valerie Plesch/Getty Images
BP CEO Bernard Looney doing what he does best—gesticulating in front of a backdrop at a fancy economics conference

BP CEO Bernard Looney has resigned. On Tuesday afternoon, the Financial Times reported that his departure was the result of his failure to disclose the “extent” of his “past personal relationships with colleagues,” per BP. “He did not provide details of all relationships and accepts he was obligated to make more complete disclosure,” the company said, noting that that it was conducting an ongoing investigation into his conduct following multiple “allegations.” Looney, 53, who has worked at BP since 1991, was brought on as CEO in 2020 as a fresh face to pivot the company formerly known as British Petroleum toward the future. He made $12 million last year, which is more than double what he took home in 2021.

Details about Looney’s departure are still scant. But in a less than auspicious coincidence, the news came on the same day that International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol announced that, for the first time ever, the agency projects peak demand for coal, oil, and gas to arrive before the end of this decade. He called it the “beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era.” In 2018, two years before Looney took office, fossil fuel pollution was found to be responsible for one in five deaths worldwide.

Under Looney’s watch—during which time there has been a drumbeat of catastrophic, climate change–fueled storms, floods, and heat waves—BP first made and then broke its much-hyped plans to scale back oil and gas production and double down on lower-carbon ventures like electric vehicle transport, wind, and solar. Like its competitors, the company saw record profits from oil and gas extraction in 2022. That made it less attractive to spend big on less profitable low-carbon businesses.

Earlier this year, BP, which has been linked to the 1953 coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, announced that it would look to cut fossil fuel production by 25 percent against 2019 levels by 2030—not by 40 percent as it had pledged earlier. BP’s spending on low-carbon ventures, it should be said, has always been small. The U.K.-based think tank Common Wealth found that, in 2022, BP spent 14 times as much on shareholder payouts (including both dividends and share buybacks) as it did on “low carbon” ventures.

BP is not Beyond Petroleum, as it once tried to brand itself. It is decidedly, though, Beyond Looney.

John Fetterman’s Reaction to Biden Impeachment Is All We Care About

The Pennsylvania senator captured perfectly how stupid this all is.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden on Tuesday, and Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman is calling it out for the deeply unserious move that it is. 

When asked for a response to the news, Fetterman feigned shock and distress.

 “Oh my God, really?” he asked, his voice squeaking upward in pitch as he grabbed his head in his hands.

“Oh my gosh, you know, oh—it’s devastating!” Fetterman went on, before breaking into laughter.

“OooOooo don’t do it! Please, don’t do it!” he moaned, clutching at his heart as his aide pulled him away. “Oh no, oh no!”

Fetterman’s response says all we need to know about how the Democrats feel about this impeachment inquiry: It’s one big joke.

The House speaker has launched this inquiry, despite having no evidence of wrongdoing by the president and despite criticism from members of his own party. On Sunday, Republican Representative Ken Buck slammed the entire impeachment inquiry. 

“The time for impeachment is the time when there’s evidence linking President Biden—if there’s evidence—linking President Biden to a high crime or misdemeanor,” Buck said. “That doesn’t exist right now.” 

The impeachment inquiry could also spell trouble for the 18 Republicans representing districts Biden won in 2020.

When Fetterman was asked about McCarthy’s plans for the impeachment inquiry last week, he responded: “Go ahead. Do it, I dare you.”

“It would just be a big circle jerk on the fringe right,” Fetterman added.

“Engaged in Insurrection”: Minnesota Lawsuit Seeks to Kick Trump off Ballot

This is the second lawsuit in a week that could remove Trump from a 2024 ballot.

Scott Olson/Getty Images

A group of voters in Minnesota filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to remove Donald Trump from their state’s presidential ballot, the second such suit against the former president in less than a week.

The voters filed the petition with the Minnesota Supreme Court, arguing that Trump should be disqualified under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. That section of the Constitution states that anyone who has taken an oath of office to the United States and then “engages in insurrection or rebellion” against the country is banned from holding public office again.

Trump has been indicted twice, once federally in Washington and again at the state level in Georgia, for trying to overturn the election. While he has yet to be tried in either case, the lawsuit argues that “during his 2020 re-election campaign, and after the results made clear that he had lost the election, Trump inflamed his supporters with claims that the 2020 presidential election had been rigged.”

“None of this conduct was undertaken in performance of Trump’s official duties, in his official capacity, or under color of his office,” the suit states. “Rather, Trump engaged in insurrection solely in his personal or campaign capacity.”

This is the second lawsuit to remove Trump from a state ballot that has been filed in less than a week. Last Wednesday, a group of Colorado voters represented by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, filed a petition to remove Trump from the Colorado ballot. The voters are either Republican or unaffiliated.

Colorado’s Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold would be responsible for declaring Trump ineligible for the ballot. Although she is named as the defendant in the suit, she appeared to welcome it because it could clarify the law.

“I look forward to the Colorado Court’s substantive resolution of the issues, and am hopeful that this case will provide guidance to election officials on Trump’s eligibility as a candidate for office,” she said in a statement.

Election officials in multiple states are looking into whether Trump is even eligible to run next fall. A survey conducted by The Messenger of all 50 secretaries of state found that six are already looking into legal arguments to keep Trump off the ballot.

As Matt Ford pointed out in The New Republic last week, there is the potential for this to wreak havoc on the election if Trump is disqualified during or even after primary season. But “the rest of the American political system should start thinking about the possibility that Trump, the leading GOP contender for next fall’s presidential election, might not end up on the ballot at all.”