Lauren Boebert provoked anger as she heckled Joe Biden as he talked about the death of his son Beau during his State of the Union address.
The Colorado congresswoman was booed as she interrupted the president as he talked about the flag-draped coffins of fallen service members, to blame him for the deaths of 13 troops in Afghanistan.
Her heckling came as Mr Biden had emotionally recalled how his eldest son had died from cancer, which could have been caused by burn pits in Iraq.
“You put them in there, 13 of them,” she could be heard yelling, causing vice-president Kamala Harris to grimace in obvious disapproval at the Republican lawmaker’s actions.
Ms Boebert took to Twitter following the address to defend herself.
“When Biden said flag draped coffins I couldn’t stay silent. I told him directly he did it. He put 13 in there. Our heroic servicemen and women deserve so much better,” she tweeted.
It was not the only example of poor behaviour by Ms Boebert, who along with Marjorie Taylor Greene turned her back on Mr Biden’s cabinet as they entered for the address.
The pair also chanted “Build the wall” after Mr Biden promised to “secure the border and fix the immigration system.”
The president, however, did not flinch and carried on, saying that he did not know if his son’s brain cancer had been caused by the burn pits he had lived next to while on active duty.
The ISIS-K terrorist attack at Hamid Karzai International Airport last August that killed 13 US service members and at least 170 Afghans was the result of a single explosive device, a military investigation found.
A further 18 US troops were wounded in the attack, which came as Mr Biden ended the US occupancy of Afghanistan after 20 years.
During America’s post-September 11 wars, huge open-air burn pits were used to dispose of the mountains of trash on US military bases.
Everything from food packaging to human waste to military equipment, chemicals, paints, petrol, plastics and tyres were dumped into the huge pits and set alight with jet fuel.
Many of the pits covered acres of land and burned all year round without going out, all within close proximity to where US troops were sleeping, eating and working.
One of the biggest pits spanned 10 acres, burning around the clock at Balad Air Base, just north of Baghdad.
