Today, Explained - Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “loony lies”

Episode Date: February 3, 2021

Vox’s Aaron Rupar explains why Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has likened a fellow Republican’s views to cancer. And New York magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi explores what lawmakers peddling conspiracy theories means for the future of the GOP. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Back in August of 2020, we did an episode titled, What is QAnon? The answer, a conspiracy theory cult that believes Donald Trump is on a mission to defeat a liberal league of cannibalistic pedophiles. The reason we decided to make that episode was because a member of Q had just won a primary in Georgia's 14th and was all but sure to be elected to Congress. Her name? Marjorie Taylor Greene. Or should I say now, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Since entering office, she's filed articles of impeachment against Joe Biden,

realized that impeaching someone is actually a lot of work, and been on the defensive over a long history of what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell himself has called loony lies that are a cancer on the GOP. How loony lies that are a cancer on the GOP. How loony? How about Jewish space lasers are responsible for California's wildfires? Just weeks after the head of their own party called for an insurrection,

the GOP has been forced into a reckoning over a freshman representative from Georgia's 14th, and House Democrats have called a vote on Thursday to strip her of her committee positions, forcing Republicans to formalize their positions on the controversy. Aaron Ruppar has been covering Greene for Vox. Last week, there was an explosion of scandals surrounding her day after day of revelations of things that she said

that were kind of outrageous, of things that she did that went beyond social media that were outrageous. And so it's led this week to kind of a standoff where House Democrats and some Republicans are demanding that House Republican leadership take action and at the very least remove her from the Education Committee. But at this point, it's not at all clear that that's going to happen. Well, let's take a deep breath and dig into what's been unearthed from her previous social media activity. Oh, do you want me to? I thought we were literally taking a deep breath there. I wasn't going to I was going to hold it forever. Yeah.

Yeah. Tell us. Tell us. Give us the details. Okay. So there were a series of posts under Marjorie Taylor Greene's personal Facebook page. In one case, she liked a comment that said, quote, a bullet to the head would be quicker, end quote, to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Yikes.

I'm just reading another little blurb here from the CNN report. It says, quote, in other posts, Green liked comments about executing FBI agents who, in her eyes, were part of the deep state working against Trump. Yikes. She also, you know, posted comments endorsing the executions of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Yikes. So, you know, they were posts that, for one reason or another, escaped attention until CNN kind of dredged them up. So that happened on Tuesday of last week.

And then the very next morning, a video went viral of Marjorie Taylor Greene harassing David Hogg on the streets of Washington, D.C. David, why are you supporting the red flag laws? Hogg, of course, gained some level of publicity following the mass shooting at a school in Parkland, Florida, back in 2018. He survived the school shooting and went on to found a group that works on gun control. If school zones were protected with security guards with guns, there would be no mass shootings at schools.

Do you know that? And in this video, Marjorie Taylor Greene can be seen following him on the sidewalk as he heads to the Capitol for meetings and basically castigating him, calling him a coward. Guess what? I'm a gun owner. I'm an American citizen. And I have nothing but this guy with his George Soros funding

and his major liberal funding has got everything. And then from there, it was kind of a frenzy of people finding other videos that Marjorie Taylor Greene posted, you know, in some cases filming herself talking about conspiracy theories involving the Clintons

that they allegedly, you know, murdered John F. Kennedy Jr., talking about other school shootings being false flags, talking about Barack Obama being a secret Muslim, kind of echoing, you know, the same sort of birther conspiracy theories that Donald Trump once gave voice to. And so, especially in light of her being named to the Education Committee, you know, this video of her harassing a school shooting survivor is just a terrible look. And it was something that Nancy Pelosi drew attention to during her news conference late last week. What I'm concerned about is the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives who is willing to overlook, ignore those statements, assigning her to the Education Committee when she has mocked the killing of little children. What could they be thinking?

Kind of ratcheting up the pressure for Republicans to do something to ostracize Marjorie Taylor Greene from her colleagues in the House of Representatives. I mean, beyond putting someone like this, who doesn't seem to show any empathy over a school shooting on an education committee, it's also just sort of horrifying to see a grown person abusing a kid who's been traumatized recently. Yeah, I totally agree. It's highly bizarre. But the fascinating thing is that its bizarreness kind of pales in comparison to some things that emerge later in the week, namely the Jewish space lasers.

Yes, please explain the Jewish space lasers. You know, within the galaxy of all of these conspiracy theories that she has embraced, one of them pertained to the campfire, wildfire, as it was called back in California in late 2018, where she, Marjorie Taylor Greene, posted this lengthy post arguing that a Jewish cabal was responsible for a space laser that beamed down to California and started this wildfire. And it's a pretty complex conspiracy theory. And I can't say that I've taxed my brain to the point to try and make sense of all of it. You know, it's just another data point kind of illustrating how out there some of these conspiracy theories that Marjorie Taylor Greene believes in really are. I did see that Representative Greene on Monday, perhaps under immense pressure from her party,

walked back her earlier comments that the Parkland school shooting was fake. Has she commented on all the other stuff? You know, she's really, you know, on the contrary, kind of used them to raise her own profile and portray herself, at least on Twitter, as being kind of under siege by the media, you know, by Democrats. You know, she's been very defiant. And, you know, again, that kind of puts Republicans in a box where, you know, do they kind of move forward with legitimizing her by having her on committees and by keeping her as a member in good standing in the House? Or do they try and distance themselves from her and risk alienating a significant part of the Republican base? You mentioned House Speaker Pelosi responded to this. There was news that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy met with Greene Tuesday night. I'm told from multiple sources that the discussion came out

about whether she would apologize. She indicated she would not apologize or correct her past remarks. House Republicans will have to vote on removing her from committees on Thursday. What have other Republicans in Congress been saying about all this? McCarthy hasn't really tipped his hand, but some pressure was put on him by now minority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, who released a pretty remarkable statement on Monday, you know, really railing against Marjorie Taylor Greene, who he does not mention by name, but, you know, makes very clear in this statement that he is referring to her. And it says, quote, loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party and our country.

Somebody who suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9-11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.'s airplane is not living in reality, end quote. So, you know, this obviously, you know, represents a pretty clear effort on behalf of McConnell to put some distance between sort of the QAnon faction of the Republican Party and himself and what he represents. So that, you know, puts some pressure on McCarthy to push for perhaps removing Marjorie Taylor Greene from the Education Committee. I mean, as outlandish and even scary as all of this is, from Jewish space lasers to Marjorie Taylor Greene liking comments about killing her opposition, our Democrats and even Republicans. And, you know, the country at large stuck with

Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was duly elected by the people of Georgia's 14th congressional district. They probably are. I mean, there's a long precedent for members of Congress being removed. It takes a two-thirds vote to expel a member of Congress, given that there is not that much interest on the Republican side in expelling Marjorie Taylor Greene. In terms of her being in Congress, we probably are stuck with her until 2022 at this point. As with so many other things in society these days, there is a sense in which deplatforming or removing a member of Congress from committees is effective. You just have to refer back to 2019 when Steve King, following comments that he made kind of embracing white supremacy in a New York Times interview, was removed from his committees by House Republican leadership. And that culminated

in Steve King losing a primary for his seat in Iowa. And now he is a former congressperson. So, you know, if there was a move to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from committees that she sits on, it could have an impact in terms of her prospects of winning a Republican primary next time around. But given, again, that it takes a two-thirds vote to expel a member of Congress from the House, it seems quite unlikely at this point that there's going to be sufficient Republican support for that to be a realistic possibility between now and 2022. Quick break, and then we're going to have to talk about the fact that Marjorie Taylor Greene isn't the only fresh-faced GOP representative peddling loony lies in Congress. I'm Sean Ramos for him. It's Today Explained. So

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And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. Marjorie Taylor Greene isn't the only fresh face in Congress with some serious baggage. There's Mary Miller from Illinois' 15th, who was in office for all of two days before she quoted Hitler in a speech.

There's Lauren Boebert from Colorado's 3rd, who tweeted out, Today is 1776, the day of the Capitol insurrection, and just keeps trying to bring a dang gun into Congress. And then there's Madison Cawthorn from North Carolina's 11th, the youngest member of Congress at 25 years of age who cheered on Trump supporters the day of the insurrection. My friends, I will tell you right now that there is a new Republican Party rising. The founders of our great country saw to it that the people who consent to be governed should have a voice in that government.

But my friends, bear in mind there is a significant portion of our party that says we should just sit idly by and sit on our hands. They have no backbone! Olivia Nuzzi has been writing about some of the Republicans' fresh but frightening faces for New York Magazine. We got in touch to ask her what these people are really about and what they might mean for the future of the GOP. They are kind of anti-elite, anti-establishment, very similar to how Donald Trump was.

And similar to Donald Trump, they really seem to be about their personal brands. Madison Cawthorn, I think it was revealed in a document obtained by the press last week, that he said that he thought that policy was pretty much secondary in his office to media and comms and press. And I was thinking back, I interviewed him a couple of weeks ago on the day of the impeachment vote in the house for New York magazine. And he said something similar to me about how, in his view, media, comms, public relations, that was the most important thing, more so than kind of the details of policy and figuring out how the government works and, you know, what should go into a bill, stuff like that. And he is pretty open about the fact that he's like obsessed with AOC and really wants to try to replicate what she managed to do on the right. Sorry. So Madison Cawthorn, youngest Congress member, spoke at the RNC, loves Donald

Trump, cheered on Trump supporters the day of the insurrection. He also loves AOC? Yeah, you know, it's less surprising than you would think. I remember, I think it was shortly after she was elected, Steve Bannon publicly saying something to this effect as well, that he thought that she was a genius and really respected what she had been able to do in terms of making herself this celebrity, this superstar who really seemed to polarize people. And you can see there's sort of envy and admiration for the way that she is able to communicate, is really good at it, and is able to get the level of attention that these freshman representatives really want. And I think it's why, I think it explains in part why Republicans so gleefully

attack her. It's because they want her to, they're trying to bait her into responding so that they can be elevated to her level by being in a public conversation with her. It seems wildly perverse that Madison Cawthorn really admires AOC and sort of wants to emulate her, and also played a hand in encouraging an insurrection on the Capitol in which AOC disclosed this week, you know, not only did she feel like her life was put at risk, but that it really connected to trauma she's had from a sexual assault in her own life. I mean, does that connect

for someone like Madison Cawthorn at all? Yeah, I mean, in fairness, I haven't spoken to him about this since AOC. She first came out in an Instagram Live some time ago now, and then she did another one on Monday night. I haven't talked to him about that specifically and about what she had to say about it. But it was interesting to—I talked to a member of his staff the day of the insurrection, and that was prior to my interview with him for this piece. And they were really scared. Other Republicans that I talked to who publicly support the president were very scared that day. And it didn't really seem like, for people who were physically there, that they were making the connection between their own behavior and the behaviors that they had either explicitly or tacitly endorsed for the last four years and what was happening that day. And so Cawthorn was kind of able to tell the story of that day

and of his experience that day and navigating out of the Capitol, being vulnerable physically because he is disabled and in a wheelchair, and then not really apologize or not really take any responsibility for the fact that hours earlier he had been speaking at the rally at which the then president incited the insurrection. You know, he was able to instead sort of fashion this alternative reality that he proposed to me where he kind of looked back in

regret, not at what he actually did do, but in his mind, not taking an opportunity to kind of become a hero and save the day. He said something to the effect of, I'm paraphrasing, but maybe had he gone out there and talked to the mob and addressed the mob, they would have taken him seriously or listened to him and they would have stopped doing what they were doing. And he really seemed to believe that he could have stopped it even though he helped start it.

So there's an intense disconnect. And that's always been true with Donald Trump, where what you hear when you speak to these people, when you speak to Donald Trump, and what the actual behavior is, is completely disjointed sometimes. Yeah, you'd think we'd be used to it by now. I wonder, you know, it also just seems jarring that someone like Cawthorn, or who knows, Green, Boebert, they might want to emulate AOC's, you know, PR strategy or media savvy.

That seems to sort of overlook the fact that AOC is also a huge policy proponent. She's got a ton of ideas of how she'd like to change the country, not just dismantle the government, but, you know, advance government and see what government can do for her constituents. I mean, people are already talking about AOC running for Schumer's Senate seat, about her being the future of the Democratic Party. Does that mean that the future of the GOP might just be what we just experienced for four years? It might just be more of the same? Well, I have two thoughts about that. One is that I'm sure you could pick apart AOC's popularity and attribute it to all sorts of different factors. It's sort of like this emerging of all sorts of things that make her as famous and as effective as she is. But the policies that she talks about are extremely popular. So she's not talking about fringe, kooky shit that she's going to get people to buy into. She's just kind of very effectively

marketing and talking about things that people already seem to believe based on the polling on these issues. It's not really clear what the hell Marjorie Taylor Greene or Madison Cawthorn, what their ideology is, what their grand plan is at a policy level to improve or change society. So I think it's just sort of a, I guess, a naive understanding of what it is that makes AOC so popular and a very like shallow, self-interested way to look at this where it's like, oh, I'm sure I could replicate that on the right if I just sort of make the right motions and pick the right fights with the right people. But I think that all indications seem to be that this continues to be Donald Trump's party, and that means that it continues to be the party of people like Marjorie Taylor Greene

and Madison Cawthorn. Well, if the endgame here is to just get more attention, get more publicity, get more PR, I mean, if the past month of events have taught us anything, it's that, you know, once you take away Donald Trump's Twitter account and, you know, his statements on cable news all day, he's kind of powerless? Does it make more sense with people like Green and Cawthorn peddling conspiracy theories to just ignore them? Or is that just not even possible anymore? I'm not really sure. I mean, I think that is always going to be true in some ways, but it's hard to know what the

right thing to do is. I mean, she is unfortunately, depending on your worldview, she's unfortunately in a position of power. She's unfortunately a member of Congress. She unfortunately has some control, some power over people's lives, at least in her district. I was talking to the parents of one of the men who was murdered at Parkland. His name was Scott Beagle. He was one of the teachers there. And they were really furious and really upset to learn that Marjorie Taylor Greene thought that it was fake, thought that their son wasn't dead

or that maybe he had never existed. And they asked me before they decided that they wanted to come out and publicly push back on what she believes, what should we do? If we don't respond, we're allowing this lie to continue without being shut down. If we do respond, I'm paraphrasing, but if we do respond, we're basically running the risk of exposing even more people to this lie and sort of legitimizing her by engaging her in a conversation but ultimately they decided that the best way to shut down the lie would be to talk directly to it

and to address her and address it initially when i was speaking to them um last week i think it was they were saying you know what do we have to do? Do we have to like bring her to Scott's mausoleum? Like, do we need to show her the tape that shows him being killed? And while I was writing the story, the father, Michael Shulman, sent me an email with two screenshots of the video, the security video in which his son is killed, I was like completely devastated to be caught off guard by that image and to see it. But I was more devastated by the idea. And he said, you know, let me know if you want to publish these. And I was more devastated to think like that anyone is in a position

where they feel like they have to prove that the worst thing that ever happened to them, that they live with the effects of every day, actually happened. You can find Olivia Nuzzi's reporting from New York Magazine at nymag.com. We reached out to representatives for Congress members Green and Cawthorn for comment on today's episode. Green's people didn't reach back, probably a busy day for them. Cawthorn's people responded and said they didn't want to comment. This is Today Explained. Thank you.