REP.REHENSIBLE!
Pelosi rips House gun nut, some say boot her
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore into Republican leaders on Thursday for their “absolutely appalling” kid-glove treatment of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene amid mounting calls for the Georgia congresswoman to be removed from office over her support for deranged and violent conspiracy theories.
Speaking at a press conference on Capitol Hill, Pelosi took particular issue with Republican brass giving Greene a seat on the House Education Committee on Tuesday — just one day before a video reemerged of the lawmaker harassing a student survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.
“Assigning her to the education committee, when she has mocked the killing of little children,” Pelosi said. “What could they be thinking — or is thinking too generous a word for what they might be doing? It’s absolutely appalling.”
Facebook posts that resurfaced this week revealed Greene liked messages in 2018 and 2019 calling for the executions of Pelosi, other high-profile Democrats and FBI agents over her belief that they are part of “the deep state,” a key tenet of the paranoid QAnon conspiracy theory.
In response to one 2018 post that asked if it was time to hang former President Barack Obama, Greene replied, “The stage is being set.”
The unsettling messages, which were first reported by CNN, prompted Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) to announce late Wednesday that he plans to introduce a resolution to expel the Georgia lawmaker from Congress.
An adviser to Gomez told the Daily News that the California Democrat plans to roll out the resolution as early as Tuesday on a privileged basis, meaning it will likely be granted immediate consideration. The adviser said there’s “lots of interest” among Democrats to expel Greene and even “some” among Republicans.
Pelosi did not say during her press conference if she supports expulsion, but noted that she believes the House will need to assign better security details for Democratic members, since Greene and a handful of other Republicans are demanding they be allowed to bring firearms into the chamber.
“The enemy is within the House of Representatives,” Pelosi said. “We have members of Congress who want to bring guns on the floor and have threatened violence on other members of Congress.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the chamber’s top Republican, has stayed conspicuously mum about Greene in light of her past social media posts resurfacing.
Greene, meantime, has doubled down.
In a spree of tweets Thursday, Greene railed against journalists for reporting on her past social media messages and questioned why her less controversial posts aren’t making the news.
“I’m sure the media would never report breaking news about how grateful I am to be a mother. And how I feel about our responsibility as parents,” she tweeted. “The media only reports the lies, smears, and attacks in order to create the image they want the world to believe.”
An ardent supporter of former President Donald Trump, Greene was elected last year to represent a deep-red northwestern part of Georgia.
Long before her Facebook usage drew renewed scrutiny this week, she was known to promote QAnon, the unhinged theory that claims Satan-worshiping Democrats are operating a child sex trafficking ring that Trump is on a covert mission to expose. She has also pushed unfounded claims about gun control advocates faking school shootings to enact stricter gun laws.
Despite her controversial history, Trump welcomed Greene’s support and praised her as a “Republican Star” last year.
Greene returned the favor by perpetuating Trump’s false claim that President Biden’s election was facilitated by mass voter fraud.
She was among dozens of Republicans who raised baseless challenges to the Electoral College results during the joint session on Jan. 6 — after a proTrump mob stormed the Capitol in a failed bid to overturn Biden’s election with violence.