Greene: Capitol attack would have worked with her leading
Idaho’s Kootenai County Republican Central Committee has announced U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Northwest Georgia, will be the keynote speaker for its Lincoln Day Dinner in February, even after her remarks at a similar dinner in New York caused controversy.
Greene is in demand across the country to speak to Republican groups. At a dinner Saturday hosted by the New York Young Republican Club, she recounted how her critics have wrongly called her an organizer of the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump that left one person shot dead and led to the deaths of two other police officers.
“I want to tell you something. If Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, we would’ve been armed,” she said Saturday, according to the New York Post.
In response, White House spokesman Andrew Bates told CBS News it “goes against our fundamental values as a country for a member of Congress to wish that the carnage of Jan. 6 had been even worse, and to boast that she would have succeeded in an armed insurrection against the United States government. This violent rhetoric is a slap in the face to the Capitol Police, the DC Metropolitan Police, the National Guard and the families who lost loved ones as a result of the attack on the Capitol. All leaders have a responsibility to condemn these dangerous, abhorrent remarks and stand up for our Constitution and the rule of law.”
Monday afternoon, Greene issued a statement saying that her remarks were in jest and the administration of President Joe Biden administration took her sarcasm too seriously.
“The White House needs to learn how sarcasm works,” Greene’s statement said. “My comments were making fun of Joe Biden and the Democrats, who have continuously made me a political target since Jan. 6.”
Since she was first elected in 2020, Greene has been accused of promoting antisemitic and white supremacist conspiracy theories, along with the QAnon conspiracy theory that alleges satanic pedophiles and cannibals run a global child sex trafficking ring. Greene said she no longer believed in QAnon on the House floor after a majority of representatives voted to revoke her committee assignments.
She has been promised a return to committee work as the new Republican majority in Congress prepares to take office.
The Idaho dinner will take place Feb. 11 at the Coeur d’Alene Resort, and single tickets cost $175 each, with sponsor options of silver and gold at $5,000 and $10,000 each, respectively.