Republican party leaders will meet with extremist Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene next week as an ongoing crisis over her racist and bizarre political views continues to roil American politics.
Meanwhile, Greene tweeted on Saturday that she had had a phone call with Donald Trump which she described as “great” and that she was “so grateful for his support” – probably cementing her position as a champion of the far-right Trumpist wing of the party.
Greene, who has in the past expressed support for the racist QAnon conspiracy movement, has been the subject of a number of media reports revealing her past posts on social media that support or promote a range of fringe, violent and bigoted ideas.
Some important outside groups have demanded the Republican party condemn her and Democrats are pushing for Greene’s removal from Congress or at the very least that she be taken off the important committees that she’s been given positions on.
Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House leader, will now sit down for a conversation with Greene next week, his office said. But Republican leaders have so far offered no meaningful condemnation of Greene or indication that they will take action against her.
Greene herself has remained angrily defiant in the face of the criticism, though her Facebook profile has had many posts removed. “I will never back down. I will never give up,” she said in a statement on Friday.
Since arriving in Congress Greene has become a symbol of how far to the right much of the Republican party moved under Donald Trump and the continued influence of extremists in its ranks, especially after the 6 January attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
Democratic congresswoman Cori Bush said Friday she is moving her office away from Greene due to safety concerns after Greene and her staff berated her and refused to wear masks. Bush told MSNBC she is moving her office, “not because I’m scared” of Greene, “because I am here to do a job for the people of St Louis”.
“What I cannot do is continue to look over my shoulder wondering if a white supremacist in Congress, by the name of Marjorie Taylor Greene … is conspiring against us,” she said.
Calls for action against Greene have grown louder as more and more reports have emerged of her extreme views, In past social media posts uncovered by CNN, Greene indicated support for executing Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. In a 2018 Facebook post reported by MediaMatters, she echoed conspiracy theories that the wildfires that ravaged California that year were caused by a laser from space triggered by a group of Democratic politicians and companies for financial gain.
In a 2019 confrontation with survivors of the Parkland mass shooting documented on tape, she appeared to accost the students and later echoed conspiracy claims that mass shooting survivors and family members of victims are “crisis actors” and the attacks that killed their loved ones were staged as a plot to pass gun control laws.
Some of her views embrace antisemitic tropes and that has prompted some Republican Jewish groups to speak out against her.
The Republican Jewish Coalition said on Friday it is working with part leaders on “next steps” and noted that it opposed Greene’s 2020 election because “she repeatedly used offensive language in long online video diatribes” and “promoted bizarre political conspiracy theories”.
Meanwhile the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations – which includes major conservative Jewish groups groups like AIPAC and American Friends of Likud among the 53 Jewish groups its represents – issued a strongly worded condemnation and call for action.
The group said Greene was spreading “baseless hate against the Jewish people” and called for a “swift and commensurate” response from political leaders.
Elsewhere the Human Rights Campaign has called for McCarthy to remove Greene from her committee assignments.
“There must be consequences for her actions. The Human Rights Campaign calls on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to hold her accountable and remove Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from all her assigned Congressional committees at the very least,” said HRC President Alphonso David.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
