ATLANTA — The U.S. House stripped Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments Thursday afternoon.
Greene, a freshman member from Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, has a long record of making incendiary remarks ranging from allegedly supporting violence against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democrats, to spreading baseless claims that mass school shootings were staged.
Greene sat on the House Education and Labor, and Budget Committees.
Earlier in the day, Greene spoke on the House floor, stepping back from those statements, and even revealing she experienced a school shooting incident herself.
“You see, school shootings are absolutely real. And every child that is lost, those families mourn it,” Greene said. “I understand how terrible it is, because when I was 16 years old in 11th grade, my school was a gun-free school zone, and one of my schoolmates brought a gun to school and took our entire school hostage.”
Greene is referring to an incident that happened at South Forsyth High School in 1990, in which an armed sophomore held nine classmates hostage for hours before surrendering. Randy Floyd Addis, 17, brought a semiautomatic rifle, a shotgun and a pistol to the school and fired over students’ heads, holding about 40 at gunpoint before releasing some and taking the rest hostage.
Addis eventually surrendered after getting dizzy. He was charged as an adult with kidnapping and weapons violations.
Greene said she loves kids and believes that they should never be left unprotected. Greene has been a proponent of Republicans calls for “good guys with guns” to protect schools and said she believes the National Guard should be deployed at schools.
Greene said she loves God and is “grateful and humbled to be reminded I’m a sinner and that Jesus died on the cross to forgive me for my sins.”
In her remarks, Green also explained how she came to follow conspiracy theory QAnon, which she says she stopped following in 2019.
“I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true,” Greene said. “And I would ask questions about them and talk about them. And that’s absolutely what I regret. Because if it weren’t for the Facebook posts and comments I liked in 2018, I wouldn’t be standing here right now.”
Greene said she was never interested in politics until she found a candidate she liked, Donald Trump.
“He was someone I could relate to, someone that I enjoyed his plain talk, not the offensive things, but just the way he talked normally,” Greene said. “And I thought maybe finally this was someone that would do something about the things that deeply bother me.”
A Message to the Mob from Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene pic.twitter.com/bdbG4OGrlK
— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) January 29, 2021
Republicans spent the day Wednesday trying to figure out whether Greene should be removed from those assignments. Ultimately, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy decided against removing Greene from her committee assignments.
He said in their private meeting she denounced previous comments about conspiracy theories.
“She said she was wrong. She has reached out in other ways and forms and nothing that she said has been based upon since she’s been a member of Congress,” McCarthy said.
Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan said Wednesday night that she’s not what the Republican party represents.
“We are headed in the wrong direction. If we continue to elect folks who take her Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene] we’re going to continue to lose as Republicans. It’s the simple. It’s hard to watch,” Duncan said.
Cox Media Group
