Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s endorsement of conspiracy theories, violence sparks calls for her resignation — again

Several prominent Democrats and activist groups are arguing Greene should resign or be removed from elected office, and a small number of GOP lawmakers have also criticized her after her posts and comments resurfaced. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), according to Axios, “plans to have a conversation” with Greene, who has dismissed the denunciations as attempts to “cancel” her.

Greene had a record of boosting conspiracy theories and making racist statements well before the firestorm of the past few days. She was elected to the House in November, becoming the first public backer of QAnon, an extremist ideology based on false claims, to win a seat, and she will serve on the Education and Labor Committee.

Since then, Greene has relentlessly boosted the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was rigged against President Donald Trump, even though dozens of courts have dismissed his claims and state officials across the country, including Republicans, have rejected the baseless allegations.

Fellow lawmakers first called for her expulsion after the Jan. 6 attempted insurrection, accusing her of being an “accomplice” to what happened at the Capitol because of her embrace of conspiracy theories. Her statements have also resulted in her temporary ban from Twitter.

On Tuesday, CNN’s KFile published the findings of its review of hundreds of posts and comments on Greene’s Facebook page. In one January 2019 post, Greene “liked” a comment advocating “a bullet to the head” of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), according to a screenshot KFile captured.

In another, from April 2018, a commenter asked, “Now do we get to hang them ??” referring to former president Barack Obama and former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, KFile reported. In response, Greene did not denounce the suggestion of assassination and instead wrote, “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.”

The offices of Pelosi and McCarthy did not respond to requests for comment about Greene’s Facebook activity or the campaign for her removal. But McCarthy spokesman Mark Bednar told Axios that Greene’s comments are “deeply disturbing” and that the GOP leader “plans to have a conversation with the Congresswoman about them.”

On Twitter, Greene characterized the KFile report as a “hit piece on me focused on my time before running for political office” but did not dispute the authenticity of the posts it highlighted. Instead, Greene wrote that she has had “teams of people manage my pages.”

“Many posts have been liked,” she said. “Many posts have been shared. Some did not represent my views. Especially the ones that CNN is about to spread across the Internet. They are taking old Facebook posts from random users to try to cancel me and silence my voice.”

Greene’s office did not respond to questions from The Washington Post about why the posts and “likes” remained on her page if she did not agree with them. Many of the posts included in the CNN article are no longer visible. It’s unclear whether Greene changed her privacy settings or Facebook removed the posts. The social media company did not respond to a request for comment.

The calls for Greene to step down grew louder Wednesday. Clinton, in a tweet, said that Greene “should be on a watch list. Not in Congress.”

Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.) called Greene’s behavior “dangerous and unacceptable.”

“This extreme and violent rhetoric only fans the flames of division,” he said, “and we’ve just seen how deadly those flames can be.”

And Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said Greene’s actions disqualify her from their party.

“She is not a Republican,” Kinzinger said on Twitter. “There are many who claim the title of Republican and have nothing in common with our core values. They are RINOS. She is a RINO.”

As scrutiny of Greene’s digital record intensified, Fred Guttenberg, the father of slain Parkland student Jaime Guttenberg, recirculated a video from Greene’s YouTube account showing her trailing school shooting survivor David Hogg, then a teenager, for nearly two minutes. Repeating conspiracy theories, she accused him of using “George Soros funding” to “take away my Second Amendment rights.”

“He’s paid to do this,” she said of Hogg, who had to hide in a classroom closet to avoid the gunman who stormed Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Greene, looking at the camera, added, “He’s a coward.”

“I will answer all of your questions in person,” Guttenberg tweeted at Greene. “Get ready to record again.”

In it, Greene implies that gun-control activists staged the shooting to “terrorize our mind-set and change our minds on the Second Amendment.” It’s unclear when Greene first recorded the post, but she said she was working on behalf of American Truth Seekers, a now-defunct blog devoted to conspiracy theories.

Greene has a history of singling out Democrats — especially Pelosi — with threatening and ominous rhetoric. Before she ran for office, Greene circulated a petition to have Pelosi impeached. In February 2019, she led a group of Trump supporters into the speaker’s office, where she accused Pelosi of “treason” and suggested she “shall suffer death or shall be imprisoned.”

In now-deleted posts, Greene “liked” one comment encouraging her to “beat Pelosi’s a–” and another that advocated Pelosi’s ouster “through removal or death, doesn’t matter, as long as she goes.”

In others, she criticized FBI agents not being sufficiently loyal to Trump. She “liked” one comment that proposed capital punishment for those law enforcement officials, reading: “Trump already said there were some great ones working with FBI but some have fallen and quite frankly need to be hung for TREASON!”

And in another Facebook post, surfaced by the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters for America and also published Tuesday, Greene endorsed the gruesome conspiracy theory dubbed “Frazzledrip,” which involves Clinton, her aide Huma Abedin, satanic ritual and child murder. A commenter called it “another hillary hit.”

Greene replied: “I post things sometimes to see who knows things. Most the time people don’t.”