Taking her oath of office to protect electoral democracy. Getty Image
Despite admittedly stiff competition, QAnon clown and domestic terrorist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene definitively clinched the title of Most Ghastly and Inappropriate Person In Congress this week with a flood of revelations she's spent the last few years trying to get Democratic leaders executed, stalking survivors of school shootings she claims were staged, and proving, says Hillary Clinton, "This woman should be on a watch list. Not in Congress." Before she "won" her seat in Georgia's solid red 14th Congressional District when her Dem opponent dropped out, Greene had made a crackpot name for herself as an Internet provocateur boosting QAnon conspiracy theories about the cannibal/pedophile cabal run by elites - ie Democrats - that only god/king/Fuhrer Donald Trump could stop. She argued 9/11 was an inside job, Hillary had secretly killed a child in a Satanic ritual, an Islamic invasion would follow the 2018 mid-terms, ActBlue funded "Antifa/BLM terrorism," a random montage of angry black people in the streets proved "this is the Democrat (sic) party." In 2019, her White House petition sought to impeach Nancy Pelosi for "crimes of treason" for her support of sanctuary policies "serving illegals and not United States citizens," arguing Pelosi "gives aid and comfort to our enemies who illegally invade our land" and "It's, uh, it's a crime punishable by death is what treason is"; in another broadcast, she said the House speaker will "suffer death or she'll be in prison" for her "treason," ditto Rep. Maxine Waters. She also filmed herself roaming the halls of Congress to make Muslim Reps. Omar and Tlaib retake their oaths of office on a Bible, not a Quran, "so they're following our laws," which don't exist.
Within days of winning her seat, Greene upped her Class Fascist shtick, raving so insistently the election was stolen she got suspended from Twitter, wearing a "Trump Won" mask to take her oath of office, and, once the MAGA mob she incited charged into the Capitol, refusing to wear a mask because it was "oppressive." While Politico had earlier uncovered hours of Greene spewing racist bile, a CNNKFile reveal on Tuesday was yet more damning. It featured dozens of 2018 and 2019 posts where she called school shootings "false flags" using "crisis actors" and the 2017 Las Vegas shooting a Dem plot to take away guns, endorsed fringe conspiracy theories, and supported calls for Pelosi, Clinton, Obama and other Democrats to be executed; she liked a suggestion "a bullet to the head would be quicker" to remove Pelosi and responded to a query "Now do we get to hang them?" with, "Stage is being set. We must be patient." Greene dismissed the "hit piece" about posts from way back last year when she was young and stupid, claiming she had "teams of people" managing her online accounts. It was harder to duck the hard, sick evidence of a 2019 video released by Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was among the 17 victims of the Parkland school shooting, showing a frenzied Greene stalking and harassing survivor David Hogg; he later noted that while he stayed calm, "What you don't see are the sleepless nights, the flashbacks, the hypervigilance and deep pitch black numbness so many of us feel." Now both Parkland and Sandy Hook families are asking that Greene be censured and removed for her deranged denial. "She hasn't disowned any of it," says Guttenberg. "She has let the lie live."
The GOP, meanwhile, has mindlessly called for "unity" and done its complicit best to distance themselves from Greene, along with the "Nazi hat trick" of other far-right-wingers - Nazi-enamored, spelling-challenged Rep. Madison Cawthorn and gun-toting rioters-tour-guide Rep. Lauren Boebert - that have "found a home" with an increasingly cowardly, extremist - "Okay now one with the hoods off" - GOP. Today's Congress: The only place where you can not just advocate for killing your peers and not get arrested, but as a bonus get elected. Among many others, AOC has excoriated a GOP caucus where "there are no consequences" for violence, racism, misogyny, insurrection: "That silence is acceptance." She especially singled out craven House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for refusing to hold his members accountable for their complicity in the Capitol riot, charging him with "fealty to white supremacist organizations." Pathetically, McCarthy already had a "you're a Congresswoman now!" talk with Greene's fellow nutjob Boebert, defending them and asking the press to "give them an opportunity before you claim what you believe they have done and what they will do." He'd also gone bravely out on a limb by saying he found Greene's earlier comments "appalling." After CNN's revelations, he amplified his displeasure, troubled-Susan-Collins-like, by calling Greene's murderous impulses "deeply disturbing," and said he "plans to have a conversation" with her about them. Still, he went ahead and gave Greene - mad denier of America's most infamous school shootings, proud stalker of their survivors - a seat on the House Education and Labor Committee, where Greene says she is "ready to get to work" to reopen every school in America, champion religious freedom, protect homeschooling, and harass trans kids. Pelosi: "The enemy is within the House."
Amidst multiple calls for Greene to resign, California Rep. Jimmy Gomez introduced a resolution to expel Greene from office in light of "her repeated endorsements of sedition, domestic terrorism, and political violence." "I don't need to explain why @RepMTG is a clear and present danger to Congress and our democracy," he wrote. "She did it herself. And she must go." Alas, she's evidently, rabidly intent on staying, unaware "it's not ok to threaten to kill a political rival" and uninterested in dialing it down. When Sen. Ralphael Warnock (!!) criticized her, she called him a "heretic." She told U.K. white supremacist Katie Hopkins the riot was cool. At a sparse town hall - COVID's raging in her district - she slammed a media that "makes me sound like a monster" and threatened to arrest a reporter who tried to ask her a question; her "communications director" said the reporter "caused a scene" (not). Her Twitter posts still alternate between dumb and vicious. She's been reposting benign older posts that don't call for assassinating colleagues - She has many kinds of friends! It's great when scientists discover something God writes about like water deep in the earth! - and why aren't they breaking news? She wants to "diligently continue to work on impeaching President Biden for abuse of power," also Kamala Harris and Pelosi. Responses suggest she is unhinged and "staggeringly unqualified" - "Who gets to tell her Pelosi can't be impeached?...I feel like she doesn't have a firm grasp on how government works...There is something wrong with this woman" - though, given she used to want them executed, she may be mellowing. It's all so relative: In a now-erased Facebook post, Greene proposed, based on her "research," that the deadly 2018 California wildfires were caused by a Jewish laser beam from space. "I really hope they have very good aim beaming the sun's power down to earth," she mused. We really hope, after she's booted from Congress, she gets some help.
