When Iowa Rep. Steve King lost re-election in a primary last year, many House Republicans breathed a sigh of relief that their politically most toxic member – someone whose open sympathy with white supremacists made him a pariah in the house – was eventually thrown overboard from their ranks.
His replacement soon emerged in Georgia: Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The new GOP congressman from Georgia arrived on Capitol Hill in January, who is known to have an on-again, off-again flirtation with QAnon, and a penchant for believing conspiracies about 9/11 and the Sandy Hook shooting . But on Tuesday – less than three weeks after a pro-Trump gang stormed the Capitol in search of politicians to kill – CNN’s KFILE revealed that in the past, Greene had publicly supported social media posts advocating the murder of Democratic politicians. , including Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
As CNN notes, Greene found a January 2019 comment that said “a bullet to the head would be faster” to take Pelosi out of power.
Many in the GOP who were relieved to see King leave are now despondent that they have added someone much more extreme to their ranks – and angry that their leadership did not see this coming. Her brand of extremism has been known to party leaders for months: After an initial series of racist, Islamophobic comments from Greene were reported by Politico for her June primary, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) called them “terrible.” But then he did not intervene to stop her victory, and since then he has welcomed her into the fold of the party.
On Tuesday, McCarthy’s office told Axios that he intended to “have a conversation” with Greene about the social media posts. But for many at the GOP conference, that’s all he has to do. “I remember people saying MTG was going to be a Steve King problem,” said a House Republican assistant, “and it’s starting to become clear that she’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 night that he was filing a motion to remove her from the House.
“Her presence in office is a direct threat to the elected officials and employees who serve our government,” Gomez said in a statement. “It is in view of their security, as well as the security of institutions and officials in our country, that I call on my colleagues in the House to support my resolution to immediately remove Congressman Marjorie Taylor Greene from this legislative body.”
Some Democrats had already backed that move, and it is likely that Gomez will have company for his resolution. On Wednesday afternoon, freshman Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA) that Greene should resign or else be deported. “If you don’t understand that calling for the murder of political rivals is a threat to democracy,” he said, “don’t represent it.”
Many Democrats still haven’t 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 an offer for a mask. Four people in the room later tested positive for COVID-19. Greene later said in an interview with far-right British commentator Katie Hopkins that Antifa was responsible for storming the Capitol – another conspiracy theory, which McCarthy himself took to the House to denounce.
The Congresswoman’s first real legislative act was to introduce articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden after he was inaugurated – a move that made even many in the GOP grimace. She is assigned to the House Education and Labor Committee and the House Budget Committee, which puts her in more favorable territory than King, who stripped his last term of committee duties.
When asked at a briefing Wednesday if the White House had a comment on whether Greene should be punished in any way for her social media posts, White House press secretary Jen Psaki replied, “We won’t. And I’m not going to talk about her, I guess, in this briefing room. “
At a public town hall in her district Wednesday night, after urging supporters to “ resist ” while Democrats have the majority and “ refuse to be told you can’t say certain things, ” Greene scolded the media for what she described as a conspiracy to portray her as a ‘monster’.
So for someone like me, they’ll dig everything they can to make me sound like a monster and a horrible person. And they are
are going to report on that non-stop, but they will never post about the thousands upon thousands of really nice Facebook or Twitter posts I’ve made. Bible verses, praise someone, do something good…. They will just always make someone like me look like a monster. And that is not correct. It has to stop. “
A few minutes later, a local reporter who tried to ask Greene a question was sent off. Meredith Aldis, a reporter for local TV station WRCB, said she and her crew were threatened with arrest and escorted outside despite being invited and acknowledged to the meeting. She said reporters had been warned they would be thrown out if they asked questions, but she noted 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 a part of her character – has become a known amount to groups advocating for gun safety. Her rally at gatherings focused on groups like Everytown and Moms Demand Action and her seemingly self-filmed diary-like videos, once posted to her Facebook page, regularly promoted conspiracy theories about some of the most horrifying mass shootings in American history.
Her claims that school shootings from Parkland, FL to Newtown, CT were false flags have been extensively documented by CNN’s KFILE and Media Matters.
On Wednesday morning, Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime, was murdered in a 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, tweeted a video of Green chasing down and yelling at David Hogg, a Parkland survivor who was held in high regard and who became a champion of gun safety. all the way to the Capitol. The footage, taken from Greene’s own YouTube page and filmed weeks after Hogg’s classmates were shot, quickly spread across the internet.
In the months following Parkland, one of many mass shootings she claimed was “ false flags ” – that is, staged. According to CNN, they have all been removed now KFILE.
In an undated video, Greene, wearing a black hat with a rolled-up yellow hose and the words “Don’t tread on me,” argues that the 2017 Las Vegas shooting was a leftist plot to end gun rights. Another, removed from her social media but dug up by Media Matters, is less sinister and more bizarre and focuses on Moms Demand Action, a gun safety group.
“All these moms who demand action – moms who demand action: you have to grow some balls,” she said in March 2018. “And the problem is you don’t have balls. We need dads.”
Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, in a statement on Wednesday called for Greene’s removal.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene should be demoted to Infowars with the school’s other shooting deniers, not walk through the halls of Congress,” she said. “Her reckless words and actions have put the lives of her colleagues, mass shooting survivors and all Americans. She is dangerous and must go now.”