Republican Rep Lauren Boebert said she would have heckled President Joe Biden the way she did during his State of the Union address on Tuesday.
The Colorado freshman spoke on Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News and defended her actions after other members of Congress booed her.
“It is never wrong to stand up and speak out for moms and dads who lost their children,” she said.
Ms Boebert interrupted Mr Biden’s speech when he was discussing burn pits in Iraq and speculated how it might have caused his son Beau’s glioblastoma, which killed him in 2015.
“When they came home, many of the world’s fittest and best trained warriors were never the same. Headaches. Numbness. Dizziness,” he said. “A cancer that would put them in a flag-draped coffin.”
In response, Ms Boebert yelled out “You put them in 13 of them,” in response to the 13 service members who died in Afghanistan in an explosion during the United States’ exit from Afghanistan last year.
Ms Boebert told Ms Ingraham that “100 per cent responsible for the deaths of the 13 brave service members we lost in Afghanistan,” and that the president “took zero responsibility for it.”
Ms Boebert said that one of the mothers of a service member who was killed lives in her district.
“She told me Joe Biden killed her son. So, you’re darn right I spoke up. And if I could redo last night, I would absolutely do it again,” she said.
Many Democrats denounced Ms Boebert’s actions. Democratic Rep Ruben Gallego, an Iraq veteran, took special exception, saying that he lived near a burn pit.
“As someone that lived next to a burn pit I don’t appreciate @RepMTG and @laurenboebert Had to interrupt the first time ever burn pits are mentioned in a State Union of address to score a political partisan point. #trash,” he tweeted.
Sen Mitt Romney of Utah also criticised Ms Boebert’s actions.
““We typically sit with respect for the president regardless of their party, and yelling out accusations … it’s just really repugnant and repulsive,” he told reporters in Utah after the speech, according to The Deseret News.
