On Thursday evening, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) of her committee assignments over her previous comments supporting conspiracy theories like QAnon, 9/11 “truth,” Jewish space lasers, and the idea that school shootings were “false flags.” Greene had expressed regret for the statements and explicitly disavowed some of the more noxious conspiracy theories.
The House voted, 230-199, in favor of H.Res. 72, striking Greene from her assignments on the Committee on Education and Labor and the Committee on the Budget. Eleven Republicans joined 219 Democrats in voting for the resolution.
Before the vote, Greene herself said she regrets the statements she made. She also explicitly disavowed some of the conspiracies, declaring that “school shootings are absolutely real,” and adding, “I also want to tell you, 9/11 absolutely happened.”
“I decided to run for Congress because I want to help our country,” Greene added. “I never once said, during my entire campaign, ‘QAnon.’ … I never said any of these things since I had been elected to Congress. 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.”
She transitioned to discuss the gospel, saying “none of us are perfect.”
“And if this Congress is to tolerate members that condone riots that have hurt American people, attacked police officers, occupied federal property, burned businesses in cities, but yet wants to condemn me and crucify me in the public square for words that I said and I regret a few years ago, then I think we are in a real big problem, a very big problem,” Greene warned.
(Part Two) pic.twitter.com/suyiefPXBF
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) February 4, 2021
CNN Editor-at-large Chris Cillizza claimed that Greene does not truly regret her words — she is fundraising off of these attacks, after all. Yet this is the kind of declaration I called for last week. Greene finally did explain her previous comments, and she explicitly disavowed the conspiracy theories she previously supported. While I would like to see some contrition and some explanation for her calls for violence against Democratic politicians, this disavowal is a positive step.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) noted that Democrats have cited Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who condemned Greene’s controversial statements.
“I would remind them what Leader McConnell said when Democrats voted to nuke the judicial filibuster: ‘You’ll regret this. And you may regret this a lot sooner than you think,'” McCarthy warned.
“If people are held to what they have said prior to even being in this house, if the majority party gets to decide who sits on what other committees, I hope you keep that standard, because we have a long list you can work with in your own,” the Republican leader added.
McCarthy condemned the entire exercise as a “distraction from the real issues” like COVID-19 relief. “This is the least productive Congress since last year. I thought that’d be hard to beat,” he quipped. “There is nothing for workers who have lost their jobs, including thousands of blue-collar jobs that were eliminted just by a stroke of a pen by President Biden, even laying off the union workers who endorsed him.”
McCarthy mentioned numerous Democrats who have kept their prestigious committee assignments even after anti-Semitic statements, inciting supporters to harass public servants, and carrying on romantic relationships with Chinese spies.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) — a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee — claimed that Jews had “hypnotized” the world and said Americans only care about Israel because of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) “Benjamins. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) serves on the House Intelligence Committee despite his romantic history with a Chinese spy. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, urged leftists to harass members of the Trump administration in public places.
Stripping Greene of her committee assignments sets a dangerous precedent, one Democrats may grow to regret.
Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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