In June of last year, Facebook videos emerged of Marjorie Taylor Greene making racist comments. A spokesperson for Kevin McCarthy said, “these comments are appalling, and Leader McCarthy has no tolerance for them.” Minority Whip Steve Scalise took it a step further, throwing his support behind Greene’s primary opponent.
Greene was able to win that primary, though, and she easily won election into the House of Representatives. On Wednesday, more viral videos of the Georgia congresswoman came to light.
But instead of punishing Greene, she was placed on the House Education and Labor Committee. This refusal to condemn Greene, says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, shows that the QAnon wing is now controlling the Republican caucus.
The New York congresswoman told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes:
“It increasingly seems, unfortunately, that in the House Republican caucus, Kevin McCarthy answers to these QAnon members of congress, not the other way around. And that is something that frankly needs to be said — he said he was going to pull representative Marjorie Taylor Greene aside after, you know, her comments to Parkland activists and comments saying that Muslim Americans should not fully and freely serve in the House, that they must be forced to swear on a Bible, et cetera.”
Ocasio Cortez concluded, “It means that that silence is acceptance, and they want it because they know that it is a core animating political energy for them. And this is extremely dangerous — an extremely dangerous threshold we have crossed because we are now away from acting out of fidelity to their president that they had in the Oval Office, and now we are talking about fidelity to white supremacist organizations as a political tool.”
Todd Neikirk is a New Jersey based politics and technology writer. His work has been featured in psfk.com, foxsports.com and hillreporter.com. He enjoys sports, politics, comic books and spending time at the shore with his family.
