Ahead of a vote by the House of Representatives to strip Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments, the freshman congresswoman seemingly denounced her prior belief in completely nutso QAnon conspiracy theories, which have plagued her short time in office. The move to strip her assignments came after Greene met with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who decided to take no action against Greene for recently unearthed disturbing things she previously did and said like harassing Parkland school shooting survivor David Hogg, supporting calls for the execution of Nancy Pelosi, writing that the California wildfires are caused by Jewish-owned space lasers, and accusing Hillary Clinton (and other Democrats) of being part of a satanic cabal that mutilates and eats babies.
McCarthy said Greene’s conspiracy theories have no place in the Republican Party, but they were made before she was a member of Congress, and she promises not to do it again. Greene leaned into the argument that those beliefs were in the past while speaking on the House floor on Thursday. She said she “stumbled across” QAnon back in 2017, and she now realizes she was wrong to engage with its conspiracy theories on social media. Via CNN:
“The problem with that is though is I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true, and I would ask questions about them and talk about them, and that is absolutely what I regret,” she said.
Greene also said that she believes “9/11 absolutely happened” and “school shootings are absolutely real and every child that is lost, those families mourn it.”
While Greene attempted to paint her beliefs as “words of the past,” her arguments didn’t hold up to scrutiny as the journalists who first reported on her concerning social media activity noted significant holes in Greene’s mea culpa. Greene attempted to blame the media frenzy on her simply Liking or commenting on Facebook posts, which is not the case. Greene posted videos of herself calling for Pelosi to be executed.
She said Nancy Pelosi could be executed for treason on video. Multiple times.https://t.co/EOHxaDe1V6 https://t.co/Qqr7GYPlZ5
— em steck (@emsteck) February 4, 2021
Greene also said that she never mentioned QAnon while running for Congress, which was also not true. She praised the conspiratorial cult as “patriotic” during a local TV interview in July.
Greene says she didn’t talk about Qanon during her campaign, but in a local interview in July she said, “l’ve only ever seen patriotic sentiment coming out of that source.”
Greene declined to answer if she still was a follower.https://t.co/qAXowtVKR8pic.twitter.com/UdIYyvKKXT
— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) February 4, 2021
(Via CNN)