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When Iowa Representative Steve King lost his re-election in a primary last year, many House Republicans sighed in relief that their most politically toxic member – one whose open sympathy with white supremacists made him an outcast in the House – was eventually kicked out. their ranks.
His replacement quickly appeared in Georgia: Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The new Georgia GOP congressman arrived on Capitol Hill in January, known for having a recurring flirtation with QAnon and a penchant for believing in the 9/11 plots and the Sandy Hook shooting. But on Tuesday – less than three weeks after a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in search of politicians to kill – CNN’s KFILE revealed that in the past, Greene had publicly supported posts about the social networks that advocated the murder of Democratic politicians, including the president. Nancy Pelosi.
As CNN notes, Greene liked a comment from January 2019 that “a bullet in the head would be faster” to remove Pelosi from power.
Many in the GOP who were relieved to see King go are now discouraged that they added someone far more extreme to their ranks – and angry that their leaders didn’t see this coming. His brand of extremism has been known to party leaders for months: After an initial round of racist and Islamophobic comments by Greene were reported by Politico ahead of his June primaries, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R -CA), called them “appalling”. But then he did not intervene to stop his victory, and he has since welcomed it into the fold of the party.
McCarthy’s office told Axios on Tuesday that it plans to “have a conversation” with Greene about the social media posts. But for many GOP conference attendees, it’s the least it has to do. “I remember when people said MTG was going to be a Steve King problem,” said a Republican House aide, “and it’s starting to become clear that it’s going to be a much bigger problem than that.”
The newly revealed messages were the last straw for Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA), who announced Wednesday evening that he was tabling a motion to have it removed from the House.
“His very presence in power poses a direct threat to elected officials and staff who serve our government,” Gomez said in a statement. “It is with their safety, as well as that of institutions and officials across the country in mind, that I call on my colleagues in the House to support my resolution to immediately remove MP Marjorie Taylor Greene from this chamber. legislative body.
Some Democrats had already approved the move and it’s likely Gomez will have company for his resolution. On Wednesday afternoon, Freshman Rep Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) tweeted that Greene should resign or be kicked out. “If you don’t understand that calling for the murder of political rivals is a threat to democracy,” he said, “you shouldn’t be allowed to represent one”.
Many Democrats still have not forgiven Greene for her behavior on January 6, when she was filmed without a mask in a secure room on Capitol Hill during the attack and ignored a mask offer. Four people in the room then tested positive for COVID-19. Greene later said in an interview with far-right British commentator Katie Hopkins that the antifa was responsible for the storming of the Capitol – another conspiracy theory, which McCarthy himself brought to the House to expose.
The MP’s first real legislative act was to introduce articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden following his inauguration – a move that made even many in the GOP wince in private. She was assigned to the House Education and Labor Committee and the House Budget Committee, putting her on more favorable ground than King, who spent her last term stripped of his committee assignments.
Asked at a briefing on Wednesday whether the White House had a comment on whether Greene should be sanctioned in any way for his social media posts, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, replied, “We don’t. And I’m not going to talk more about her, I think, in this briefing room.
At a town hall in his district Wednesday night, after urging supporters to “resist” when Democrats have a majority and “refuse to be told you can’t say certain things,” Greene denounced the media for what she described as a conspiracy. to portray her as a “monster”.
“So for someone like me, they’re going to dig up whatever they can to make me look like a monster and a horrible person.” And they are
I’ll be reporting on this over and over, but they’ll never post to the thousands and thousands of really nice Facebook or Twitter posts I’ve posted. Bible verses, congratulating someone, doing something good…. They’re just going to make sure someone like me looks like a monster. And it is wrong. It has to stop.
Minutes later, a local reporter who attempted to ask Greene a question was kicked out. Meredith Aldis, a reporter for local television station WRCB, said she and her team were threatened with arrest and escorted when invited and accredited for the meeting. She said reporters had been warned they would be kicked out if they asked questions, but noted to Greene that she was also a “taxpayer” who had the right to speak.
Over the past several years, Greene – who has made transporting guns of all shapes and sizes a part of his personality – has been a known quantity to groups advocating for gun safety. His tirades at rallies have targeted groups like Everytown and Moms Demand Action and his diary videos, once posted to his Facebook page, have frequently promoted conspiracy theories regarding some of the most gruesome mass shootings in history. American.
His claims that the school shootings from Parkland, FL to Newtown, CT, were false flags have been widely documented by KFILE and CNN’s Media Matters.
On Wednesday morning, Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was murdered in a school shooting in Parkland, Fla. In 2018, tweeted a video of Green chasing and shouting at David Hogg, a Parkland survivor turned advocate for the gun safety, as he walked. to the US Capitol. The footage, taken from Greene’s own YouTube page and filmed just weeks after Hogg’s classmates were shot, quickly spread across the internet.
In the months since Parkland, one of the many mass shootings she claimed was ‘false flags’ – that is, staged – Greene posted and liked posts mocking Hogg . All have now been deleted, according to CNN KFILE.
In an undated video, Greene, wearing a black hat with a coiled yellow snake and the words “Don’t Tread on Me,” posits that the 2017 Las Vegas shooting was a leftist plot to end gun rights fire. Another, removed from its social networks but unearthed by Media Matters, is less sinister and more bizarre, targeting Moms Demand Action, a gun safety group.
“All these moms who demand action – moms who demand action: you have to grow balls,” she said in March 2018. “And the problem is, you don’t have bullets. We need dads.
Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, called in a statement Wednesday for Greene’s withdrawal.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene should be relegated to Infowars with the other school gun deniers, not the halls of Congress,” she said. She is dangerous and must go now. “
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