- Rep. Lauren Boebert told a crowd God may use them to stand in front of "demons," or a "speaker of the House."
- Boebert, though she was coy about what House speaker she referred to, tried to block McCarthy's bid.
GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert discussed "standing up to demons" including a "speaker of the House."
Boebert, who was re-elected in November in an unexpectedly tight race, was speaking at a women's conference held at a church in Dallas, Texas, over the weekend when she made the comments.
"Ladies, I know you are on fire for God," the congresswoman from Colorado said, according to a clip of the speech shared by the liberal PAC PatriotTakes.
"God is using you in mighty ways. Maybe he'll have you ball up your fists, and stand in front of some demons — maybe a speaker of the House," she continued, prompting laughter and a standing ovation from the audience. When the crowd quieted down, she added: "I also stood up against Nancy Pelosi so nobody knows what I really meant there, for the record, when they try to put this in print."
—PatriotTakes (@patriottakes) February 6, 2023
Whether she was referring to Pelosi, or not, Boebert was among the hard-right faction of Republican representatives who initially refused to support McCarthy as speaker in the new GOP majority.
After negotiations within the party and 15 rounds of voting, McCarthy was finally elected speaker last month, kicking off the new Congress. Boebert never voted for him, but switched her vote to "present" rather than for another member, ultimately benefitting McCarthy's chances at winning.
In order to win the speakership, McCarthy made certain concessions to the hard-right faction, though the extent of those concessions was unclear.
In her speech at the church over the weekend, Boebert said she and some colleagues presented McCarthy with a "list of concessions" but that he "dismissed them."
"We started hearing lies about the meeting, that we came in asking for a personal wish list, nothing for the good of the country," she said.
Boebert ended up with a coveted committee assignment on the House Oversight Committee, the main oversight body in the chamber that would lead potential investigations into President Joe Biden.
A representative for Boebert's office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Boebert has made controversial comments about Christianity and the government in the past. In June she said she was "tired of this separation of church and state junk," which is in the US Bill of Rights, or the first 10 Amendments added to the US Constitution.
In another speech at a Christian conference in September, Boebert said it was "time for us to position ourselves and rise up and take our place in Christ and influence this nation as we were called to do" and that humanity was in its "last days."
Andrew Whitehead, a sociologist at IUPUI and co-author of "Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States," told Insider at the time her comments touched on Christian nationalist imagery that's linked to violence.
"Citing the end times really does feel like a call to action and a rallying cry in some sense," Whitehead said, adding: "A lot of that end times imagery is associated with violence and rapture and descending into chaos societally."
Boebert has been accused of promoting Christian nationalism, or the belief that Christianity should have a privileged position in the US, but has denied being a Christian nationalist.
Have a news tip? Contact this reporter at kvlamis@insider.com.