Lauren Boebert is truly an idiot. Obviously her behavior of the past week proves that, but another recent lie she pushed has been proven to be debunked, and this was something she did a few weeks ago, prior to her Beetlejuice fiasco. Face it, the nickname “Slowbert” is well earned.

Boebert tried to drop some fear in the laps of her conservative followers by pushing a hoax that’s at least 17 years old, and one that doesn’t have anything to do with the United States.

And in so doing, she’s been kneecapped by The Washington Post’s Fact-Checker for the claim, which is about federal payments made to unauthorized immigrants, Raw Story reports.

“Biden is giving each illegal family $2,200 per month plus a free plane ticket and free medical care,” Boebert posted on X. This nonsense received millions of views and thousands of reposts. “If you come to this country illegally, you get everything handed to you on a silver platter. If you’re a struggling American citizen,  you get nothing. You actually just subsidize this foolishness.

Biden is giving each illegal family $2,200 per month plus a free plane ticket and free medical care.

If you come to this country illegally, you get everything handed to you on a silver platter.

If you're a struggling American citizen, you get nothing. You actually just…

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) September 8, 2023

But The Washington Post’s fact-checker Glenn Kessler will have you know this is wrong, wrong, wrongity-wrong. It’s not true, he notes. Under U.S. law, migrants who have a valid claim to have fled from war or persecution receive a one-time payment to start their new lives, and that’s all they receive. Undocumented immigrants aren’t eligible. Boebert’s claim is dumb enough to make you think it was posted by Marjorie Taylor Greene, but had the claim been correct the roughly 2 million or so immigrants released into the country since 2021 would have cost a whopping $53 billion per year.

To put that in its proper perspective, the entire budget for the Department of Homeland Security is $60 billion per year.

Kessler writes that variations of this false claim have been bouncing around the internet for years — and one of the earliest versions doesn’t involve the U.S., instead it’s about migrant policy in Canada.

In 2018, Kessler tells us, “a Facebook meme … made this false claim: ‘Illegal refugees get $3,874/mo. under the Federal Assistance Program. Our SS checks are approximately $1,200/mo.’ That meme in turn was based on a Facebook post that Snopes in 2017 debunked — a post that referred (falsely) to refugee policy in Canada.”

That supposedly “monthly” sum of $3,874 is actually a one-time payment for a family of five. Kessler even notes, “In 2006, on a webpage called ‘Just the Facts,’ Canada’s immigration department was compelled to post a statement debunking the idea that refugees received more financial assistance on a monthly basis than pensioners.”

WaPo contacted Boebert’s staff and they did not respond to a request for comment. However, a member of her staff told a Colorado television station that her source was the Gateway Pundit, which is nothing but right-wing trash.

From WaPo: “NewsGuard, which rates the accuracy of news sources, says Gateway Pundit is “a far-right political website that publishes false and misleading content” and “regularly distorts information and occasionally spreads conspiracy theories.” Gateway Pundit earned from NewsGuard a score of 20 out of 100 — which means the “website is unreliable because it severely violates basic journalistic standards.”

Boebert might be trying to appear all smart when it comes to the border, but all she’s succeeded in doing is showcasing the fact that she lacks critical thinking skills.

Which, of course, has been evident ever since she was elected to Congress in 2020.