Marjorie Taylor Greene responds to being removed from committee assignments

Marjorie Taylor Greene Hurls Insults After Committee Removal

 

Feb. 5, 2021, 11:15 a.m. ET4 hours ago

4 hours ago

By Catie Edmondson and Glenn Thrush

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/us/marjorie-taylor-greene.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

 

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, said she was “freed” after the House voted to end her committee assignments over her promotions of violence and misinformation on social media.

“When the Democrats and 11 of my Republican colleagues decided to strip me of my committee assignments, education and labor and the budget committee, you know what they did? They actually stripped my district of their voice. They stripped my voters of having representation to work for them. I had the greatest opportunity yesterday, and I’m so grateful for it. I got to say what I had done wrong. And do you know how freeing that is? I’m not kidding. I seriously feel blessed by God because I got to do it on a world stage. I got to say, I said things wrong. I believe things that were wrong. Going forward, I’ve been freed. I do. I feel freed because you know what’s happening on these committees? You see, we have basically a tyrannically controlled government right now, the Democrats. So if I was on a committee, I’d be wasting my time because my conservative values wouldn’t be heard and neither would my districts. Right now, my Republican colleagues are being told that their white skin makes them inherently racist or that their service in our nation’s military to our country, defending our freedoms, makes them bad and a domestic terrorist. How are we at this place?”

 

“I woke up early this morning literally laughing thinking about what a bunch of morons the Democrats (+11) are for giving some one like me free time,” she wrote on her personal Twitter account.

 

“In this Democrat tyrannical government, Conservative Republicans have no say on committees anyway,” she said, adding, “Oh this is going to be fun!”

 

Ms. Greene is responding to her public reprimand in much the same way that former President Donald J. Trump, a role model and ally, reacted to his — by hurling insults.

 

Unlike Mr. Trump, she pulled back the curtain to reveal her political approach, admitting that Democrats were helping to amplify her importance on social and mass media.

 

Ms. Greene, 46, cast the saga as a battle for free speech in a news conference on Capitol Hill, lamenting that Republicans “are being told that their white skin makes them inherently racist,” in her first extensive remarks since she was stripped of her committees a day before.

 

She began with a free-ranging speech in which she chastised the media for their coverage of her, declaring that the Republican Party belongs to Donald J. Trump and “doesn’t belong to anybody else.”

 

She complained that her the loss of committee posts “stripped my voters of having representation to work for them,” adding that as a successful business owner, she would have been a valuable voice on the Budget Committee.

 

A moment later, however, she claimed the decision had “freed” her from “wasting my time” with the minute details of legislating.

 

On Thursday, Democrats warned that the unwillingness of House Republicans to punish one of their own represented a danger to their party and to the country at large.

 

“When acquiescence to the suggestion of violence of any kind is allowed to go unchecked, it is a cancer that can metastasize on the body politic of our nation,” said Steny H. Hoyer, the majority leader of the House, in a speech on the House floor, as Ms. Greene sat nearby. 

Ms. Greene’s determination to remain in the spotlight obliterated even the slim hopes of House Republican leaders that Ms. Greene, empowered by her devotion to Mr. Trump, would quiet down in the name of party unity after her rebuke.

 

On Thursday, 11 Republicans joined all the chamber’s Democrats in removing her committee assignments. Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, had refused to discipline her after stripping Representative Steve King of Iowa of his assignments two years earlier.

 

The episode laid bare deep divisions among Republicans about how to move forward as a party. In the days leading up to the vote on Ms. Greene, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the most powerful Republican in Washington, had denounced her statements, which he called “loony lies,” saying such conspiracy theories were a “cancer” on the party.

 

Several other top Republican senators had joined him in denouncing Ms. Greene and saying she could not become the face of the party.

 

Hours before her Friday tweet, Ms. Greene — who has allied herself with the QAnon conspiracy movement, promoted anti-Jewish tropes and suggested using violence against political opponents — sought to downplay her previous statements and cast herself as an earnest newcomer trying to represent her constituents.

 

In emotional remarks on the House floor, Ms. Greene expressed regret for her previous comments and disavowed many of her most outlandish and repugnant pronouncements. She said she believed that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks “absolutely happened” and that school shootings were “absolutely real” after previously suggesting that aspects of both were staged.

 

Asked by a CNN reporter  on Friday if she would apologize for some of her most offensive comments made before she was elected to Congress, Ms. Greene initially stood firm and demanded that the reporter offer an apology for the network’s coverage of the Trump-Russia investigation.

 

Asked again — by a different reporter — Ms. Greene offered her first unequivocal apology to date.

 

“Of course I’m sorry for saying all those things that are wrong and offensive,” Ms. Greene replied. “And I sincerely mean that, and I’m happy to say that. I think it’s good to say when we’ve done something wrong.”