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Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., is facing a backlash after a CNN review of Greene’s Facebook page showed that in recent years she had liked posts calling for violence against prominent Democrats while promoting extremist conspiracy theories.
As CNN reported, Greene, who has repeatedly come under fire for her past support of the QAnon conspiracy theory, liked comments that said that “a bullet to the head would be quicker” than removing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and that “through removal or death, doesn’t matter, as long as [Pelosi] goes.”
Greene also responded to a user who suggested that former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton be hanged by saying: “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.”
Then, in a speech she posted on Facebook Live, Greene said that Pelosi was “guilty of treason” and that treason is “a crime punishable by death.”
The posts were dated 2018 and 2019, before Greene’s run for office. NBC News hasn’t independently verified the posts, which have been deleted.
They weren’t the only posts that have recently landed Greene in hot water. Wednesday, a video Greene posted to YouTube this month featuring her berating the gun control activist David Hogg, a survivor of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018, circulated online.
In the video, Greene follows and records Hogg in Washington near the Capitol, calling him a “coward” for refusing to debate her over gun policies. It’s not clear when the video was recorded; Greene has repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of mass shootings. In one such video, she suggested that the mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017 may have been staged by gun control activists.
In another Facebook post, Greene promoted a conspiracy theory about Clinton, a top aide, and child murder and mutilation.
Greene has served in Congress for only a few weeks, but she has already faced calls from some colleagues to resign over the spreading of false information about the election in the run-up to the Capitol riot this month. Greene denounced the violence but blamed the left and the media.
Greene’s office didn’t comment to NBC News. In a tweet Tuesday ahead of the CNN story, Greene called the report “a hit piece on me focused on my time before running for political office.”
“Over the years, I’ve had teams of people manage my pages,” she said. “Many posts have been liked. Many posts have been shared. Some did not represent my views.”
She said reporters were “taking old Facebook posts from random users to try and cancel me and silence my voice.”
Greene didn’t address whether the posts in question, all of which were less than five years old, reflected her views. Some of the content has been deleted.
A handful of leaders and lawmakers condemned Greene after the report.
“She is not a Republican,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., tweeted. “There are many who claim the title of Republican and have nothing in common with our core values.”
Clinton tweeted: “This woman should be on a watch list. Not in Congress.”
Rep. Jim McGovern, R-Mass., tweeted: “And they wonder why we don’t want members carrying guns onto the House Floor.”
Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., said Wednesday he plans to introduce a resolution to expel Greene from the House.
“Her very presence in office represents a direct threat against the elected officials and staff who serve our government,” Gomez said in a statement. “And it is with their safety in mind, as well as the security of institutions and public servants across our country, that I call on my House colleagues to support my resolution to immediately remove Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from this legislative body.”
In a tweet, Wednesday, Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., called on Greene to resign and, if not, be expelled from the House.
“If you don’t understand that calling for the murder of political rivals is a threat to democracy, you shouldn’t be allowed to represent one,” Auchincloss tweeted.
Republican leaders have also taken note. Mark Bednar, a spokesman for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, told Axios that McCarthy finds the remarks “deeply disturbing” and “plans to have a conversation” with Greene about them.
McCarthy’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Republican leaders condemned Greene’s past remarks when she was a candidate before they embraced her after she won her primary. Now, some are suggesting that McCarthy should strip Greene of her committee assignments, as he did to former Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, in 2019 after comments King made about white supremacy surfaced.
“Leader McCarthy should come down on Taylor Greene like a ton of bricks,” said MSNBC political analyst Rick Tyler, who was communications director for Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign, suggesting that she should receive treatment similar to King’s “until she puts out a statement denouncing her reckless support of violence and apologizes to her colleagues for behavior unbecoming of a member.”
“From a political perspective, the longer it is before she and other Republican members like her are reined, the more political damage they are going to cause for the party,” he said.
Greene was recently appointed to the House Education and Labor Committee.
Greene continued using inflammatory rhetoric toward her political opponents Wednesday.
After Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., said that her comments were “dangerous and unacceptable for a member of Congress” and that “this extreme and violent rhetoric only fans the flames of division, and we’ve just seen how deadly those flames can be,” Greene called Warnock, a Baptist minister, a “heretic” for his liberal positions on abortion and LGBTQ rights.
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