When Iowa Rep. Steve King lost re-election in a primary last year, many House Republicans breathed a sigh of relief over his more politically toxic member — who had an open sympathy for white supremacists he became an outcast in the House – he was finally abandoned in his ranks.
Her replacement quickly replaced Georgia: Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The new Georgia GOP congresswoman arrived on Capitol Hill in January, known for having a flirtation again with QAnon and a tendency to believe conspiracies about 9/11 and the Sandy Hook shooting. But on Tuesday, less than three weeks after a pro-Trump crowd stormed the U.S. Capitol in search of politicians to kill, CNN’s KFILE revealed that, in the past, Greene had publicly supported social media advocating the assassination of Democratic politicians, including President Nancy Pelosi.
As CNN points out, Greene liked a January 2019 comment that said “a bullet in the head would be faster” to get Pelosi out of power.
Many Republican Party members who were relieved to see King go now are heartbroken that they have added someone much more extreme to their ranks and are angry that their leaders do not see this coming. The party’s leadership has known its extremist brand for months: after the first series of racist comments, Politico reported before its primaries in June 2014, the house’s minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), called them “horrible.” But then he did not intervene to stop his victory and has since welcomed her to the back of the party.
On Tuesday, McCarthy’s office told Axios that he planned to “hold a conversation” with Greene about social media posts. But for many in the Republican Party conference, this is the least they will have to do. “I remember when people said MTG would 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 recently revealed posts were the last test of Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA), who announced Wednesday evening that he was filing a motion to remove her from the House.
“His very presence in office poses a direct threat to elected officials and staff serving our government,” Gomez said in a statement. “Given their safety, as well as the safety of institutions and public officials across our country, I call on my colleagues in the House to support my resolution to immediately remove Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from this legislature “
Some Democrats had already approved this move and Gomez is likely to have company for its resolution. On Wednesday afternoon, freshman Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) tweeted that Greene had to resign or be fired. “If you don’t understand that calling for the assassination of political rivals is a threat to democracy,” he said, “you should not be allowed to represent any of them.”
Many Democrats have yet to forgive Greene for his behavior on Jan. 6, when she was filmed without a mask in a safe room on Capitol Hill during the attack and ignored a mask offer. Four people in the room tested positive later on COVID-19. Greene later said in an interview with far-right British commentator Katie Hopkins that the antifa was responsible for the Capitol storms, another conspiracy theory, which McCarthy himself brought to the House to denounce.
The congresswoman’s first real legislative act was to introduce articles of dismissal against President Joe Biden after his inauguration, an action that made even many GOP people a private grimace. She has been assigned to the House Labor and Education Committee and the House Budget Committee, placing her on more favorable ground than King, who passed her final term without her duties.
Asked on Wednesday during a briefing if the White House had any comments on whether Greene should be disciplined in any way for his posts on social media, White House press secretary Jen Psaki replied, “No. “And we won’t talk about her again, I think, in this information room.”
In a public council in his district Wednesday night, after urging supporters to “resist,” while Democrats have the majority and “refuse to tell you you can’t say certain things,” Greene criticized the media for what he described as a conspiracy to portray her as a “monster.”
“So for someone like me, he’ll dig up everything he can to make me look like a monster and a horrible person. And they’re
I will report on this non-stop, but they will never post about the thousands and thousands of really nice Facebook or Twitter posts I made. Bible verses, praising someone, doing something good … They will always make sure that someone like me looks like a monster. And that’s wrong. It has to stop ”.
A few minutes later, a local journalist who tried to ask Greene a question was expelled. Meredith Aldis, a reporter for local television station WRCB, said she and her crew were threatened with arrest and overheard despite being invited and accredited for the meeting. He said reporters were warned they would be fired if they asked questions, but he pointed out to Greene that she was also a “taxpayer” who had the right to speak.
In recent years, Greene – who has made carrying weapons of all shapes and sizes to his personality – has been a well-known figure for gun security groups. His rallies at rallies have targeted groups like Everytown and Moms Demand Action, and his seemingly filmed daily videos, once posted on his Facebook page, often promoted conspiracy theories about some of the most mass shootings. horrible of American history.
His claims that school shots from Parkland, Florida 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 killed in a school shooting in Parkland, Florida in 2018, tweeted a video of Green chasing and shouting at David Hogg, a Parkland survivor, advocate for the safety of weapons, while walking. to the U.S. Capitol. The images, from Greene’s YouTube page and filmed a few weeks after Hogg’s classmates were killed, quickly spread on the Internet.
In the months following Parkland, one of the many massive traits he claimed were “fake flags,” that is, organized, Greene posted and liked the posts mocking Hogg. Now they have all been eliminated, according to CNN KFILE.
In an undated video, Greene, wearing a black hat with a coiled yellow snake and the words “Don’t step on me,” argues that the shooting in Las Vegas in 2017 was a left-wing conspiracy to end gun rights . Another, withdrawn from social media but unearthed by Media Matters, is less sinister and more bizarre, directed at Moms Demand Action, an arms security group.
“All these mothers who demand action: mothers who demand action: you have to cultivate some balls,” he said in March 2018. “And the problem is that you don’t have balls. We need parents.”
Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, called for Greene’s withdrawal in a statement on Wednesday.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene should be relegated to Infowars with the school’s other gun deniers, not walking through Congress halls,” he said. “His reckless words and actions have endangered the lives of his colleagues, survivors of mass shootings and of all Americans.” It’s dangerous and he has to go now. “