QAnon congresswoman slapped down by Congress after disturbing gun threat against AOC and the Squad
US Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) leaves her office at Longworth House Office Building for a vote in the House chamber 4 February 2021 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The House voted later that day on removing Greene from committee assignments over her remarks about QAnon and other conspiracy theories. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The US House of Representatives has voted to expel QAnon Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene from two committees over controversial remarks she made before being elected last November.
Greene has continuously promoted baseless QAnon conspiracy theories, endorsed violence against Democrats including AOC, claimed school shootings and 9/11 were staged and said ditching gender stereotypes will “destroy our country”.
Eleven Republicans joined Democrats to pass the motion by 230-199 to remove.
Steny Hoyer, the House majority leader and Democrat, displayed a poster of an image that Greene had posted on Facebook that showed her holding an AR-15 gun with a set of progressive lawmakers in the Congress known as “the Squad”, including Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib.
The poster read: “Squad’s worst nightmare”.
Steny Hoyer, who serves as House Majority Leader since 2019, displays a picture of congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene brandishing a gun before images of Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. (YouTube/The Guardian)
Hoyer spoke to his colleagues before the vote. He said the women depicted on the poster were not “The Squad” but instead “they’re mothers”, “they’re people” and “they’re our colleagues”. He said: “This is an AR-15 in the hands of Ms Greene.
“This was on Facebook just a few months ago…
“The Squad’s worst enemy. AR-15 in hand. I have never, ever seen that before.”
Before the vote, Marjorie Taylor Greene suddenly admitted to not believing in conspiracy theories
She said she “stopped believing” in QAnon sometime in 2018 after finding “misinformation, lies and things that weren’t true” in the group’s posts. Greene retracted comments suggesting that school shootings – including the 2012 attack at Sandy Hook elementary and the 2018 Parkland shooting – were staged. She admitted, “school shootings are absolutely real”.
She also retracted claims that no aeroplane hit the Pentagon on the 9/11 terror attacks. Greene said on Thursday (4 February): “I want to tell you 9/11 absolutely happened. I do not believe that it’s fake.”
“These were words of the past. These things do not represent me,” she said.
Despite whatever remorse Greene may feel, she now cannot take her place on the education and budget committees. This limits her ability to shape policy because most legislation goes through a committee before reaching the House floor.
As such, committee positions can determine the influence of individual lawmakers in their party.
But she didn’t address another series of past inflammatory remarks
While she said she regretted some statements, Greene failed to include several other inflammatory remarks she made in the past to her list of apologies yesterday. She failed to mention her 2019 heckling of a teenage survivor of the Parkland school shooting where she called him a “coward”.
Greene also didn’t mention that she said the 2018 midterm elections usher in an “Islamic invasion of our government”.
In 2018, she also suggested the California wildfires were started by a space laser beam which was supposedly controlled by prominent Jewish banking company the Rothchilds.
