The House has voted to remove Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments.
The removal of Rep. Greene from House committee assignments comes at the heels of widespread backlash over incendiary and violent statements she made prior to her election to Congress.
The House voted 230-199 in favor of stripping Greene of her committee assignments, which included 11 Republican House members. The vote was set up by House Democrats after initially pressuring Republicans to make the decision.
In a speech ahead of the vote, the rookie congresswoman said that after "seeing things in the news that didn't make sense to me," she "stumbled across" QAnon at the end of 2017, became "very interested" and began posting about it on Facebook and talking about it.
However, Greene said: "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 also assured that she believes "9/11 absolutely happened" and "school shootings are absolutely real and every child that is lost, those families mourn it."
"These were words of the past, and these things do not represent me. They do not represent my district, and they do not represent my values," Greene pointed out.
Controversies surrounding Greene
Last week, the Georgia representative received tremendous criticism after a CNN KFile report revealed that she had repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019 prior to her election.
Greene liked a comment in a January 2019 post which said “a bullet to the head would be quicker” to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She also liked comments about executing FBI agents who she deems to be part of the “deep state” working against Trump.
Aside from her track record of incendiary rhetoric, such as Islamophobic and anti-Semitic comments, the congresswoman is also known for her links to the QAnon conspiracy theory.
A 2018 video recently resurfaced, showing Greene confronting Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg and calling the high-profile school shooting a “false flag” operation. She has also questioned whether the Pentagon was really struck by a plane in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Last month, Twitter temporarily suspended the account of Greene for repeatedly violating its civic integrity policy.
Rep. Greene’s account was suspended after she tweeted a conspiracy-laden thread about the Georgia Senate elections. Some of her tweets received warning labels on the platform, which read: “This claim about election fraud is disputed, and this Tweet can’t be replied to, Retweeted, or liked due to a risk of violence.”
In lieu with the controversies, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell admonished Greene, calling her views cancer for the Republican Party.
While Sen. McConnell did not directly name controversial Rep. Greene, his statements slammed the Georgia Republican’s “loony lies and conspiracy theories” as a “cancer” for the Republican Party.
McConnell said: “Loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party and our country. 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 crashed JFK Jr.’s airplane is not living in reality. This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can strengthen our party.”
Republicans refuse to act
On Wednesday, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy suggested Republicans would not remove Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from committee assignments.
In a statement, McCarthy said Greene’s past statements “do not represent the values or beliefs of the House Republican Conference” but did not specify any sanction against the freshman congresswoman.
Instead, McCarthy said he would “hold her to her word” that she would be more careful with her comments going forward and proceeded to attack the Democrats for Hoyer’s initiative to remove committee assignments from Greene.
