Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) speaks to reporters after attending a briefing with U.S. Secret Service officials on the cocaine substance found at the White House on July 13, 2023 in Washington, DC. U.S.
The accusations came to light after a complaint was filed with the House Committee on Ethics on September 17, which included three staffers she oversaw, one of whom Boebert allegedly paid $200,000 in hush money in an attempt to keep the relationship secret.
The sworn ethics complaint, filed by David Wheeler of the political action committee American Muckrakers, identified three current staffers —former district director Clarice Navarro Ratzlaff, district chief of staff Raven Finegan, and former chief of staff Jeffrey Small — Boebert allegedly had sexual relationships with, according to reporting from theColorado Times Reporter.
Boebert released a video responding to the allegations on September 20, calling the complaint “sloppy, desperate, obsessive hack stamps under oath on a fake filing,” and a “scam.”
“This is more filthy garbage that reaches beyond me. This reaches into the homes of people who have dedicated years of service to Coloradans alongside me,” Boebert said. “I know that you’re more than willing to attack me and shame my household, but this is different, and you crossed a line.”
Boebert, who previously went viral for fondling her companion’s genitals during a showing of the family-friendly Beetlejuice musical, seems aware of the avalanche of social media reactions these allegations caused, adding, “I hate to spoil the fan fiction, but y’all needed to do better. To the rest of y’all, no, I’m not hiring.”
The Colorado Republican denied the allegations, calling them “utterly false” and a “politically motivated stunt” in a statement released to multiple media outlets and also sent a statement to the political blog Sources Say News, denying that she’s part of the LGBTQ+ community. “Well, I’m not a lesbian or bisexual, and I have never, ever been in any inappropriate relationship, nor have I ever been sexually involved with any staff.”
Wheeler, who also published allegations in 2022, claiming Boebert worked as an escort on a sugar-daddy website and had multiple abortions, is not backing down from the complaint he filed with the House Committee on Ethics against Boebert.
"This chapter in Boebert's life is the culmination of a history of criminal activity by her and her family, deception of voters and constituents, and a pattern of sexual depravity,” Wheeler said in a statement set to Newsweek. “Boebert truly believes she is not accountable for her actions, nor do the laws apply to her.”
The newest claim that the “family values” Republican not only had sexual relationships with staffers, but did so with two different women, sparked a firestorm of memes across social media, making jokes about her being a “bisexual, hush-money-paying hypocrite,” and pointing out that bisexuals don’t need this kind of “reputational damage.”
Most of the jokes stem from Boebert’s the hypocrisy of alleging having sex with women considering the far-right Republican’s long history of anti-LGBTQ+ stances, including claiming the mere existence of drag queens and transgender people “sexualizes” spaces, opposes the Equality Act, and co-sponsored legislation aimed at restricting healthcare for transgender youth.
Hasan Piker was shocked to discover his bulge was on display for everyone to see at the Republican National Committee's midterm convention.
A photo of the left-wing political commentator posing in his underwear was shown on a more than 25-foot-tall display screen in front of a convention center full of conservative politicians in Dallas, Texas, on Sept. 9.
Piker reacted to the RNC using his nearly nude selfie on opening day of the convention while watching footage of the event on a livestream.
“Oh my god, what is going on? No, no, no, no, ” the popular influencer said.
"Nooo!" he added while laughing. "They f*cking posted the meat pic! Nooo! Yo! They posted the meat pic at the f*cking Trumpalooza!”
This two-day "special ceremonial convention” was organized to celebrate President Trump’s accomplishments and rally Republicans ahead of the midterm elections.
“They blurred my penis,” Piker said. “I don’t know what else to say about this, my meat pic is now history.”
The photo of Piker — who is a self-described socialist — was shown right after footage of a burning American flag as part of a video package aimed at discrediting the Democratic Party by portraying Piker as representative of the “extreme left” faction of the party.
The “meat pic” was originally posted by Piker on Instagram in November 2024 and is just one of many thirst traps the political commentator has published over the years.
Piker, who has 1.8 million followers on Instagram and more than 3 million on Twitch, wasn’t the only one blown away that Republicans tracked down his nearly two-year-old underwear selfie showing off his fitness progress.
Piker’s livestream quickly went viral, and people across social media started commenting on how odd it was that Republicans decided to use that photo, while others poked fun at the seeming homoeroticism of the choice.
Vivian Jenna Wilson knows what's at stake for the LGBTQ+ community. With the fast-approaching midterms, the famous transgender model is using her platform to showcase her unapologetic queerness at a pivotal moment in history.
Wilson has teamed up with Desigual on their empowering new campaign, Born to Disobey, which encourages queer people to claim their freedom and question society's traditional rules. In the viral campaign photos, she even takes a stand against the rise of AI and technology by playfully mocking a robot.
"It was such a great time participating in this campaign. The title is very charming and somewhat of an oxymoron, but systems are not fought with campaigns. They are fought with protests, activists, and societal political movements demanding sweeping changes. The midterms are coming up and we are being employed as the scapegoat to make people forget about the economy, the Iran war, and the Epstein files," Wilson tells Out.
As LGBTQ+ equality remains a hot-button topic in today's hostile political climate, Wilson is reminding her queer peers to fight back and make their voices heard at the polls this November.
"The importance of queer people building community and support networks in this time cannot be understated. With the government attempting to ban gender affirming care for trans people through an already broken and corrupt healthcare system, the repealment of anti-discrimination laws, and the demonization of queer people, we need to be there for each other right now."
Wilson understands that the LGBTQ+ community has fought for basic rights for decades, but she argues now is not the time for complacency when a potential blue wave could spark crucial progress.
"Look forward to conservatives shouting incessantly about us like kids whose ball went over the fence. Unfortunately, because they are completely incompetent, they have decided to try and distract everyone with how ookity-spookity trans people are."
While the transgender model is proactively creating opportunities and safe spaces for her chosen family, Wilson also reminds everyone to lean on one another through every major milestone. She also hopes to see every queer person expressing themselves as freely as they'd like.
"Many of us, including myself, end up having most of our typical teenage experiences in early adulthood. I think there's a specific beauty in that. Fashion has helped me figure out who I am, and made me more confident in my aesthetic and how I'm facing the world. To be honest, the people I met in fashion have likely had more of an impact on me than fashion itself. You are not alone. Find queer community however you can will always be my advice. Just be careful, safety should always be your priority."
Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kristi Noem are two of more than a dozen MAGA women who have showed their devotion to Donald Trump only to have him turn on them.
Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images | Orlando SIERRA / AFP via Getty Images
President Donald Trump has for years insisted he loves women, even as he set in motion the reversal of federal abortion rights and blocked enforcement of equal pay regulations. Still, women in politics have stood by the GOP leader — often only to face his public wrath after crossing him. Here are some of the MAGA women once embraced by Trumpworld but ultimately stung by the misogynist in chief.
A longtime Trump devotee, the Colorado congresswoman made national news early in her tenure amid allegations that she gave Capitol tours before January 6 — a claim she denied. She later supported Trump’s pardons for people convicted in connection with the attack. She became a fixture at his criminal proceedings, where she defended him, and she amplified his election lies and shared QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theories popular among his most loyal supporters.
After years of loyalty, however, Boebert ran afoul of Trump over the Epstein files. She joined a bipartisan push for the Justice Department to release related records. When Trump later vetoed a drinking water bill affecting her district, Boebert said she feared the move was retaliation. And when she campaigned for Rep. Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican who coauthored the bill requiring that Epstein-related evidence be made public, Trump called for a primary challenge against Massie and threatened to withdraw his endorsement of Boebert.
During Trump’s first impeachment, the former Florida attorney general joined his defense team for the Senate trial. After Trump lost reelection in 2020, Bondi was among the attorneys who pushed baseless claims of voter fraud. When Trump won a second term four years later, he made Bondi the nation’s top law enforcement official. As attorney general, she pursued cases against his perceived enemies and led the Justice Department’s attacks on the rights of transgender athletes and young people.
Yet Trump fired Bondi in April. She reportedly left the Oval Office in tears after he rejected her pleas to remain in the post. What prompted the rupture? Reports said Trump was angered by Bondi’s failure to move quickly enough against his political enemies and her handling of the Epstein investigation.
Few members of Congress have ever tied their political identities as closely to Trump as Greene did. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Georgia lawmaker frequently wore a face mask emblazoned with the words “Trump won” and helped spread Trump’s baseless claim that Georgia’s 2020 election had been stolen — the same election in which she first won her House seat. Even before then, she had embraced QAnon and conspiracy theories alleging that Democrats staged mass shootings to build support for gun control.
But barely a year into Trump’s second term, Greene abruptly resigned from Congress amid growing tensions with the president. After she called for the release of the Epstein files, Trump began calling her “Marjorie Traitor Greene,” “Wacky Marjorie” and other pejoratives. The split widened over Israel, the war in Iran and other issues as Greene increasingly aligned with former MAGA figures openly criticizing Trump’s decisions.
The former South Dakota governor and unrepentant puppy shooter carried out some of the harshest parts of Trump’s agenda during his second term. As homeland security secretary, she oversaw the mass deportation campaign, suspended asylum protections for refugees, and defended Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. Her public infamy arguably peaked when she defended an ICE officer who fatally shot Renee Good, an LGBTQ+ Minneapolis woman whom Noem labeled a “domestic terrorist.”
Ultimately, Trump removed the controversial Cabinet secretary, reportedly not over deaths connected to immigration enforcement but over the extravagant spending behind an ad campaign run by Noem allies in South Dakota. Although Trump technically reassigned her as special envoy for the Shield of the Americas, Noem largely faded from public view after a dominatrix alleged that she had a yearslong professional relationship with Noem’s husband, Bryon. The two are getting divorced.
The South Carolina congresswoman remade herself from a self-described “pro-transgender rights” Republican into a ferociously anti-LGBTQ politician and “proud transphobe” amid Trump’s rise. Her transformation took her from calling for a “new voice” to carry the GOP brand after 2020 to endorsing Trump in the 2024 primary. Her support came at a pivotal moment as Trump faced Haley ahead of South Carolina’s crucial Republican presidential primary.
But she was rewarded with bupkis. Trump declined to endorse her 2026 gubernatorial campaign, which ended in a fifth-place primary finish, and then snubbed her after Sen. Lindsey Graham’s death prompted a special election for his Senate seat. Whether because she was late to the bandwagon or because she joined bipartisan calls for transparency on the Epstein files, the result was the same. Mace is set to leave the U.S. House in January.
The latest example of the president’s rapid reversals is his treatment of Pirro. She serves as U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., an appointment she received after years of promoting Trump as a Fox News host. But after months of desperately searching for someone to blame for a renovation debacle that left the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool puke green, the administration charged former Olympian David Hearn with vandalism. Rather than risk the ire of a federal judge, Pirro dropped the case last month after evidence pointed to a flawed installation by a contractor — and Trump donor — as the cause of the peeling liner.
Trump lashed out the next day. “I don’t know what she was thinking,” he wrote on Truth Social, calling the pool’s problems “a pure case of VANDALISM.” In the weeks since, rumors have swirled that the president may fire Pirro over her refusal to scapegoat a private citizen for the $16 million boondoggle.
One of Trump’s most prominent Black supporters for years, Owens founded Blexit, a campaign encouraging Black voters to leave the Democratic Party, and became associated with Kanye West’s brief MAGA turn. Forbes called her the “voice of Black conservatives” as she spouted viciously anti-gay rhetoric across multiple platforms, and her support for Trump made her a conservative star during his first term.
But during Trump’s second term, Owens broke sharply with much of the MAGA movement, particularly as she became a leading purveyor of conspiracy theories after Charlie Kirk’s killing. Without evidence, Owens has alleged that his widow, Erika Kirk — whom she has called a “lesbian pedophile” — played a role in a conspiracy to have the anti-transgender activist killed. Owens also broke with Trump as she spread baseless claims about the gender of France’s first lady, Brigitte Macron. Trump’s response? He took to Truth Social and labeled Owens an “extremely Low IQ individual,” an insult he frequently directs at Black political figures, including Jasmine Crockett and Hakeem Jeffries.
The athlete-turned-activist gained prominence by harnessing anti-transgender sentiment after she tied Lia Thomas for fifth place in an NCAA swimming event — a result she has repeatedly described as a grave injustice. It was no surprise, then, that she supported Trump’s return to power after he campaigned on restricting transgender women’s participation in women’s sports. Yet Trump turned on Gaines after she joined conservatives who objected when he posted an AI-generated image depicting himself as a Christ-like figure.
After Gaines wrote that “God should not be mocked” and urged Trump to show humility, the president went from calling her a “tremendous athlete” to telling Business Insider he was “not a big fan of Riley, actually.”
When Trump began his first term, he appointed the then-governor of South Carolina as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, where she carried his “America First” agenda onto the international stage for nearly two years. But Haley later said Trump lost the 2020 election and called the January 6 attack on the Capitol a “terrible day.” She went on to run for president in 2024 as Trump mounted his comeback.
As the two competed for the Republican nomination, Trump returned to the racist birther playbook and claimed Haley was ineligible to be president because her parents were immigrants, even though she was born in the United States. He also mocked whether her dresses were “fancy” enough for a president. Although Melania Trump rarely appeared at political events, Trump ridiculed Haley’s husband for being absent from the campaign trail, omitting that the Army National Guard major was deployed overseas.
Not many social media influencers have defended Trump as fiercely as Laura Loomer, although he has downplayed how often he takes advice from the far-right provocateur. Even as Loomer openly sought a role in Trump’s orbit, aides told The New York Times she would not be hired.
Although Loomer continues to have the president’s ear, her dreams of an official job on Trump’s campaign or in the White House have eluded her. And yet, she has had influence during the second Trump administration. Loomer has allegedly been responsible for high-level firings, including Julia Curlee, a transgender woman and CIA briefer, who was a senior career official on the National Security Council until Loomer highlighted her gender identity online.
Bondi was not the only woman in Trump’s Cabinet to be ousted amid controversies less severe than any number of those surrounding Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a former Republican congresswoman, served as labor secretary during Trump’s second term and helped foster an unusual connection between the Republican administration and organized labor.
But she resigned abruptly in April as the Labor Department’s inspector general neared the end of an investigation into allegations that she drank on the job and had an affair with a subordinate, as NPR reported at the time. A White House spokesperson said she was leaving for the private sector.
The decade-long relationship between Trump and the anchor-turned-conservative podcaster has had plenty of ups and downs. During his first presidential campaign, Kelly moderated a Fox News debate and asked about his history of insulting women’s looks. The next day, he complained that she had “blood coming out of her wherever.” But after Kelly left network television, the antagonism faded, and she eventually spoke at Republican campaign rallies. Shortly before the 2024 election, NBC News reported that she planned to vote for Trump and believed he would be “a protector of women.”
But after Kelly criticized Trump’s foreign policy, including his unwavering support for Israel and strikes on Iran, he lashed out at her and other conservatives by name. “As president, I could get them on my side anytime I want to, but when they call, I don't return their calls because I'm too busy on world and country affairs,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Trump always had a fragile relationship with former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, but their political partnership remained strong enough during his first term for the new president to appoint McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, as transportation secretary. She served in the administration until January 7, 2021, when she resigned over Trump’s actions leading to the “traumatic and entirely avoidable event” at the Capitol the day before.
In the years since, Trump has repeatedly taunted Chao, often while attacking McConnell and frequently with racist undertones, including by calling his former Cabinet secretary “Coco Chow.” Chao, who was born in Taiwan, criticized Trump publicly in a statement to POLITICO, warning about the effect of such rhetoric on Asian Americans. Trump has since escalated to more personal attacks, telling online influencers that her husband was secretly brain dead.
Kellyanne Conway
Few people besides Trump himself received as large a reputational boost from his 2016 victory as Conway, who went from serving as his campaign manager to becoming a senior counselor in the White House. But despite owing much of his political success to Conway, Trump lost his temper after his first term when his longtime adviser acknowledged in a book that DemocratJoe Biden had fairly won the 2020 election.
“Kellyanne Conway never told me that she thought we lost the election,” he wrote on Truth Social. “If she had I wouldn't have dealt with her any longer - she would have been wrong - could go back to her crazy husband.” That was a reference to attorney George Conway, who gained prominence for criticizing Trump while he was married to Kellyanne Conway. The relationship between Conway and Trump appears to have since thawed, but she did not join his second administration.
The most prominent bridge between Trump’s reality TV era and his political career was the first-season contestant on The Apprentice, who joined his transition team and later served in the White House communications operation. After Manigault Newman left the administration, she wrote a tell-all book, Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House, alleging that Trump said even more appalling and racist things in private than he did in front of microphones. In the buildup to the book’s release, Trump called her a loser and unleashed a barrage of insults.
“Wacky Omarosa, who got fired 3 times on the Apprentice, now got fired for the last time. She never made it, never will,” he posted on his then-popular Twitter account. “She begged me for a job, tears in her eyes, I said Ok. People in the White House hated her. She was vicious, but not smart.”