Just on the surface, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who won a Republican congressional primary in Georgia this week and will soon be elected to Congress, is a tough-to-defend candidate. She is, after all, an adherent of the crackpot QAnon theory that says Donald Trump is secretly at war with nefarious forces of evil, including Democrats, Hollywood celebrities, the “deep state,” cannibals, and an underground ring of Satanic pedophiles.
Greene has also, of course, been criticized for a number of racist comments and offensive videos.
But just below the surface, we’re learning quite a bit more about the Georgia Republican’s stunning record.
Before running for office, Republican congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote dozens of articles as a “correspondent” for a conspiracy news website, according to archived web pages uncovered by NBC News. In posts published on the now-defunct “American Truth Seekers” website in 2017, Greene wrote favorably of the QAnon conspiracy theory, suggested that Hillary Clinton murdered her political enemies, and ruminated on whether mass shootings were orchestrated to dismantle the Second Amendment.
Alas, there’s no reason to stop here. Media Matters noted a different video in which Greene suggested the Obama administration partnered with a street gang in the murder of a Democratic National Committee staffer. The same report added that the GOP congressional candidate also falsely implicated Hillary Clinton in the death of John F. Kennedy Jr.
And in case that weren’t quite enough, Media Matters also noted that Greene referenced “the so-called plane that crashed into the Pentagon” as part of a discussion on the September 11 attacks. She added, “It’s odd there’s never any evidence shown for a plane in the Pentagon.”
Under the circumstances, I don’t imagine anyone will be surprised if other, similarly bizarre quotes come to light in the coming days and weeks. Indeed, the fact that Marjorie Taylor Greene is a radical conspiracy theorist is clearly no longer in doubt.
What’s more interesting is what Republicans intend to do now. For his part, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who’s faced some intra-party criticism for not taking steps to derail Greene’s candidacy, said yesterday he “looks forward” to the right-wing Georgian winning in November.
This came just hours after Donald Trump endorsed Greene’s candidacy, with the president calling her a “future Republican Star.” Whether Trump supports Greene despite her extremism or because of it is unclear, but when Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) this week condemned QAnon and the Republican candidates who espouse the conspiracy theory, the Trump campaign quickly went on the attack — against Kinzinger. The questions for the president and his party are simple: is there such a thing as too radical? Is there anything Greene or others like her could say or do that would trigger GOP opposition? If there’s a line that Republican leaders agree cannot be crossed, can they identify it?
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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