On Friday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) held a sprawling press conference in which she complained about her removal from committee spots in Congress the previous day. The House voted to remove her from committees over issues including her repeated past expressions of apparent support for executing prominent Democrats, and yet, she cast her removal from committees as an issue of “free speech,” which is ridiculous. The issue is that she openly backed — including on camera! — the execution of opponents, and this rhetoric isn’t some relic from the distant past. In January 2019, Greene liked a Facebook comment speaking approvingly of a “bullet to the head” for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
While speaking on Friday, Greene explained that she ran for Congress because she really doesn’t “respect what our government has become,” and she subsequently complained about a laundry list of right-wing priorities, from the national debt to undocumented immigration. She insisted, for example, that “we’ve opened our borders wide open to be flooded with illegals coming in to our country” and rehashed a couple of incidents in which undocumented immigrants have perpetrated violence. So should white people be banned from anywhere where a white person commits a violent act? That’s the depth of the supposed logic here, which is really just a smokescreen for racism. Famillarly, Greene also complained about abortion, which she ignorantly characterized as a “disgusting evil.”
She added as follows:
‘I also want you to know that free speech matters. Free speech really matters, and yesterday, when the Democrats and 11 of my Republican colleagues decided to strip me of my committee assignments… you know what they did? They actually stripped my district of their voice. They stripped my voters of having representation to work for them for the budget. A successful business-owner that knows how to make a profit, not a loss — that’s what my district voted for me for.’
And yet, here she stands — talking in a widely shared broadcast. Suggesting that Greene no longer has a “voice” is ridiculous. Greene can still affect the course of legislation through her votes when measures get to the floor, and she can still introduce legislation on her own. With the Democratic majority in the House, she likely would not have had much of an impact on the course of committee proceedings anyway. Nevertheless, Greene is characterizing her removal from committees as part of some kind of nefarious conspiracy against free speech… or something.
Watch her comments below:
