- Rep.
Marjorie Taylor Greene gave a speech before theHouse debated stripping her of committee assignments. - She said she expressed support for assassinating
Democrats because of theQAnon conspiracy theory. - Greene also acknowledged that
school shootings and the 9/11 terrorist attacks actually happened.
Speaking on the House floor ahead of a vote to advance a resolution to strip her of her committee assignments, Greene said she "stumbled across" the conspiracy theory in late 2017 and "got very interested in it."
"So I posted about it on Facebook," she said. "I read about it, I talked about it, I asked questions about it."
She added that "the problem with that is, though, is I was allowed to believe things that weren't true, and I would ask questions about them and talk about them."
"And that is absolutely what I regret," Greene said. "Because if it weren't for the Facebook posts and comments that I liked in 2018, I wouldn't be standing here today, and you couldn't point a finger and accuse me of anything wrong, because I've lived a very good life that I'm proud of ... and that's what my district elected me for."
Greene said that "later in 2018, when I started finding misinformation, lies, things that were not true in these QAnon posts, I stopped believing it." She said she "walked away from those things" and decided she would "work hard and try to solve the problems that I'm upset about."
However, PolitiFact reported that Greene had expressed support for some aspects of the QAnon conspiracy theory - like the bogus claim that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a body double - as late as February 2019.
CNN also reported last week that in January 2019, Greene liked a Facebook comment saying Nancy Pelosi, who had just become House speaker, should get a "bullet to the head." The following month, Greene broadcast on Facebook Live from Pelosi's office and said the California Democrat would "suffer death or she'll be in prison" for "treason."
During her floor speech on Thursday, Greene also addressed other comments that the September 11 terrorist attacks were a hoax and that the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was a "false flag" operation.
"School shootings are absolutely real," she said.
"I know the fear that David Hogg had that day," she added, referring to the Parkland shooting survivor whom she was filmed harassing and whom she mocked in a 2019 interview as an "idiot" who was trained "like a dog." Greene did not offer an apology to Hogg during her House floor speech.
In a 2018 speech to the American Priority Conference, Greene promoted a conspiracy theory about the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
"Barack Obama becomes president in 2008, OK?" she said. "By that time in our American history ... we had witnessed 9/11, the terrorist attack in New York and the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania and the so-called plane that crashed into the Pentagon. It's odd there's never any evidence shown for a plane in the Pentagon, but anyways, I won't - I'm not going to dive into the 9/11 conspiracy."
She walked back her remarks on Thursday. "I also want to tell you 9/11 absolutely happened," she said, adding that "it's a tragedy for anyone to say it didn't happen."
Near the end of her speech, Greene said that she "never once said during my entire campaign 'QAnon.'"
"I never once said any of the things that I am being accused of today during my campaign," she added.
She wrapped up by equating the mainstream news media with the QAnon conspiracy theory, which posits that the world is run by a cabal of Satanic, child-eating, pedophilic Democrats.