Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Faces Backlash for Conspiratorial Comments

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a newly-elected Republican representative from Georgia’s 14th Congressional District in the northwestern part of the state, is under huge scrutiny from the Democratic Congress and even Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for her embracement of QAnon conspiracy theories, some of which include 9/11 conspiracy theories, school shootings as Democratic conspiracies to enact gun control, and more.

A CNN investigation found, among other things, that Greene had voiced support repeatedly on social media for executing prominent Democrats in 2018 and 2019, prior to being elected to Congress, including former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. In 2019, she started a petition to impeach Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi for “serving illegals and not United States citizens” and suggested that she could be executed for treason. She also liked a comment calling for former Secretary of State John Kerry, a Democrat, to be hung to death.

She has also chosen to embrace dozens of conspiracy theories. The same investigation found that, after a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., 2018, she called the shooting a “false flag” operation conducted by Democrats to give them an excuse to enact gun control legislation, and denounced David Hogg, a survivor of the shooting, using the hashtag “#littleHitler” and called him a pawn and actor.

She has also said that there are links between Hillary Clinton and pedophilia and human sacrifice and suggested on numerous platforms that Obama was secretly a Muslim, that a plane crash in 1999 which killed John F. Kennedy Jr. was perpetrated by the Clinton family for being a possible rival to Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat, that a wildfire in 2018 was caused by a laser beamed from space and controlled by a powerful Jewish family with Democratic connections, and, to the shock of many, that the plane crash into the Pentagon on 9/11 was a plot by the U.S. government, among many other conspiracy theories she has embraced.

Most famously, she is known for embracing the far-right, pro-Trump conspiracy theory QAnon, which claims that Trump was facing a series of enemies in the “deep state” and a child sex trafficking ring run by Democratic politicians.

And, to nobody’s surprise, she is staunchly against abortion rights, any form of gun control whatsoever, the Black Lives Matter protest movement (calling it a “radical Marxist” group and calling white males the “most mistreated group of people in the United States”), is extremely racist, is staunchly anti-mask (calling mask-wearing “oppressive”), denounced COVID-19 restrictions as “tyrannical control” from the Democrats, and is extremely pro-Donald Trump.

In fact, she has been so aggressive toward her Democratic colleagues that Rep. Cori Bush, a newly-elected Black congresswoman from Missouri, had to move her office away from Greene.

This has caused many Democrats to call on her expulsion from Congress. Under Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution, the House can expel a member with a two-thirds majority vote. House Democrats have already filed a resolution to strip her of all her committee assignments, which could be brought to the floor as soon as Wednesday. However, her expulsion from Congress would substantial require Republican support.

So far, there has not been any prominent GOP support for her expulsion. In fact, one could argue that she has been embraced by her party. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has remained quiet on the issue, but House Democrats are speaking with McCarthy in order to discuss a path forward in dealing with Greene, according to a spokesperson for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. A number of ways have been considered by Democrats in forcing McCarthy’s hand, including by forcing the bill past the Rules Committee and onto the floor, where every single representative will be forced to go on the record over Greene, possibly putting many swing-district Republicans in tight spots. McCarthy has been reluctant to act over the fear of alienating the Trumpism wing of the GOP, considering the fact that she said, on record, on the far-right One America News, that she had the full backing of the former president and that she would “never apologize.”

That is, until today. In an almost-unprecedented statement, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell denounced Greene and said that the type of conspiracy theories she pushed were a “cancer” to the GOP.

“Loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party and our country. Somebody who’s suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.’s airplane is not living in reality. This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can strengthen our party,” McConnell said in a brief statement.

The statement could help force McCarthy to act, where Democrats have already threatened to bring the bill to a floor vote if McCarthy doesn’t strip Greene of her committee assignments within 72 hours.