The deals Kevin McCarthy cut to become speaker of the House are coming into clearer view as the House moves forward under his “leadership” and committee assignments are doled out. Now we know at least part of the price Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene exacted for being an unexpected and very vocal McCarthy supporter. Greene nabbed high-profile assignments on the House Oversight Committee and the Homeland Security Committee.
The Oversight Committee, under Chair James Comer, will be targeting Hunter Biden, including a focused investigation of why Twitter suppressed naked photos of Hunter Biden that an associate of Steve Bannon was working really, really hard to spread. Greene will doubtless find that a real opportunity to distinguish herself. But what’s next? The House Oversight Committee investigating Hunter Biden’s involvement in Jewish space lasers?
RELATED STORY: Greene tells gala brimming with white nationalists that she would've led a successful Jan. 6 attack
But that’s not all. Jamie Dupree notes that just a few years ago, Greene said, “It’s odd, there’s never any evidence shown for a plane in the Pentagon.” That’s a common refrain for 9/11 conspiracy theorists, which Greene revealed herself to be in those 2018 statements. “This is all true,” Greene responded to a Facebook comment alleging that 9/11 was a government plot. Now she’s going to be sitting on a committee created in response to 9/11.
Before the 2021 vote to strip her committee assignments, Greene tried to walk back her support of that and other conspiracy theories. But when you have to say, “I also want to tell you, 9/11 absolutely happened,” and, “School shootings are absolutely real,” you have a problem that can’t really be walked back. Except by Republicans getting power and McCarthy desperately needing support to get the résumé line he’s been dreaming of. Then the unconvincing, half-assed walkback on the 9/11 and the QAnon and the Sandy Hook and Parkland conspiracy theories suddenly becomes more than enough, and the high-profile committee assignments flow.
Also key in the move to strip her of committee assignments in 2021 were Greene’s Facebook comments and likes endorsing the assassination of Democratic politicians. When a commenter asked about hanging former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Greene replied, “Stage is being set. Players are being put in place. We must be patient. This must be done perfectly or liberal judges would let them off.”
Greene emphasized, when trying to play down her involvement in conspiracy theories: “I never said any of these things since I have been elected for Congress.” But what she has done since she was in Congress is appear at a white nationalist event. Weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Greene went on stage at the America First Political Action Conference following a “round of applause for Russia” lead by conference organizer Nick Fuentes. Fuentes has a history of statements like, “We can’t play this game of, ‘We disavow white supremacy.’ Notice how the claws come out,” and, “You can call us racists, white supremacists, Nazis, & bigots. You can disavow us on social media from your cushy Campus Reform job. But you will not replace us. The rootless transnational elite knows that a tidal wave of white identity is coming. And they know that once the word gets out, they will not be able to stop us. The fire rises!”
That’s who Greene cozied up to while a member of the United States House of Representatives. It didn’t give McCarthy pause in putting her on the House Oversight Committee and House Homeland Security Committee.
She wasn’t done addressing white nationalists. In December, at the New York Young Republicans Club gala—an event also attended by the white nationalist founder of the racist VDARE site and at which Hatewatch reported that guests “applauded members of an Austrian political party founded by World War II-era German Nazi party members”—Greene “joked” about how she could have done a better job leading the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“Then Jan. 6 happens and next thing you know I organized the whole thing, along with Steve Bannon here. And I want to tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed,” she said, adding, “See that’s the whole joke, isn’t it? They say that whole thing was planned and I’m like, are you kidding me? A bunch of conservatives, Second Amendment supporters, went in the Capitol without guns, and they think that we organized that? I don’t think so.”
(Note: There were a lot of armed insurrectionists in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 2021.)
This is how McCarthy intends to “lead” the House. This is how Republicans govern. No more pretending she’s the fringe or a largely irrelevant curiosity: Marjorie Taylor Greene is a mainstream member of today’s Republican Party.
RELATED STORY:
Kevin McCarthy's failure to act on Gosar and Greene's white nationalist flirtation says it all
