US Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday denounced newly elected US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the leading Republican calling the far-right Georgia Republican’s embrace of conspiracy theories and “loony lies” a “cancer for the Republican Party.”
“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 [former US president Bill Clinton and former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton] crashed J.F.K. Jr’s [John F. Kennedy Jr] airplane is not living in reality,” said McConnell, referring to conspiracy theories that Greene has publicized in the past. “This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can strengthen our party.”
McConnell’s explicit condemnation adds to pressure on House Republicans to take action against Greene, even as she is claiming renewed support from former US president Donald Trump.
Photo: Reuters
It came as House Democrats on Monday moved to strip Greene of her committee assignments if US House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy refuses to do so himself.
“It is my hope and expectation that Republicans will do the right thing and hold Representative Greene accountable, and we will not need to consider this resolution,” US House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said. “But we are prepared to do so if necessary,”
So far Republicans in the House have been reluctant to criticize Trump supporters, such as Greene, out of concern that they could alienate the former president’s most ardent voters, underscoring a bitter divide over how the party should navigate the two years until the next congressional elections.
Greene late on Monday responded to McConnell with a broadside on Twitter, suggesting that “the real cancer for the Republican Party is weak Republicans who only know how to lose gracefully.”
“This is why we are losing our country,” she wrote.
McConnell’s criticism of Greene was first reported by The Hill.
Democrats’ willingness to act against a member of the opposing party underscores their desire to confront far-right politicians who are closely aligned with some of Trump’s fringe supporters, including extremist groups that were involved in the riot at the Capitol last month.
“If Republicans won’t police their own, the House must step in,” said US Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat who is sponsoring the measure to remove Greene from her posts on the House education and budget committees.
Greene’s views were in the spotlight even before she joined the House last month.
The Republican has expressed support for QAnon conspiracy theories, which focus on the debunked belief that top Democrats are involved in child sex trafficking, Satan worship and cannibalism.
Facebook videos surfaced last year showing that she had expressed racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim views.
Top Republicans denounced her at the time, hoping to block her from capturing the nomination in her congressional district in northwest Georgia, but after she won the primary, they largely accepted her.
However, since then more of her past comments, postings and videos have been unearthed, though many have been deleted after drawing attention.
She “liked” Facebook posts that advocated violence against Democrats and the FBI. One suggested shooting US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the head.
In response to a post raising the prospect of hanging former US president Barack Obama, Greene responded that the “stage is being set.”
In an undated video posted online, Greene floated a conspiracy theory that falsely suggests that the 2017 mass shooting that killed 58 people at a country music festival in Las Vegas could have been a false flag operation to build support for gun control legislation.
She also “liked” a Facebook post that challenged the veracity of a 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
Pelosi last week urged House Republicans to take action.
“Assigning her to the education committee, when she has mocked the killing of little children [in Newtown], what could they be thinking, or is thinking too generous a word for what they might be doing?” Pelosi said of Republican leaders. “It’s absolutely appalling.”
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