Marjorie Taylor Greene speaks of ‘meaningless’ Jan. 6 riot, ‘child abuse’ at Wake GOP gala
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene delivered a fiery speech at the Wake County GOP gala last week in which — among other inflammatory comments — she repeated false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election, doubled down on conspiracy theories surrounding COVID-19’s origins and said the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol was “meaningless” in regular life.
Video recordings of Greene’s speech, obtained by The News & Observer, show attendees applauding some of Greene’s most controversial comments. Among Republicans, the freshman lawmaker from Georgia represents a far-right faction that maintains fierce loyalty to former President Donald Trump and promotes his agenda.
During her brief congressional tenure, Greene has established herself as one of the Republican Party’s most outspoken advocates. She has often minimized the severity of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Washington, when thousands descended upon the Capitol complex intent on preventing the confirmation of then-President-elect Joe Biden’s election.
“In all of our regular lives, it’s meaningless, because it was one day with like a three-hour riot,” Greene said at the Wake GOP gala. “But in Washington, D.C., it is everything, because they are riding that train, Jan. 6, all the way as far as they can.”
Ongoing discussions of Jan. 6 are part of a Democratic attack on Republicans, Greene said. She falsely claimed the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack forbade Republican involvement. Two of the committee members, including its vice-chair, Liz Cheney, are Republicans.
While the Capitol riot “happened and that wasn’t right,” Greene said, she suggested its culprits were not Republicans. Her comments evoked loud applause and cheers from the audience.
“A lot of us were like, ‘Hold on, our people don’t riot,’” Greene said. “We aren’t the rioters. That’s the Antifa and BLM.’”
2020 election, COVID lab comments
Other familiar refrains included claims that Trump won his reelection bid in 2020 and that COVID-19 was developed through Democratic funding.
“I say it everywhere I go, whether it’s a little bitty group of people meeting, whether it’s on Jan. 6 on the House floor, whether it’s at a great big Trump rally just last weekend that I spoke at,” Greene said, “I say every single time — Trump won the 2020 election.”
The crowd again erupted into applause.
“That’s not complicated,” Greene added. “We all know it.”
On COVID-19, Greene doubled down on the unproven theory that the virus was artificially developed in a lab. She called it “fact” that “COVID-19 got created” in Wuhan, China, where the disease first spread.
“All of us understand what COVID came from,” she said. “We are not too stupid to think that some bat bit some pangolin, or whatever that’s called, that bit a cat and then it spread to somebody else and somebody magically got something called COVID.”
Gender and children
Many of Greene’s assertions surrounded unfounded theories of “child abuse.” For example, she described a multi-million dollar medical industry that pushes children toward gender reassignment surgeries. While some exceptions exist, medical guidelines generally do not recommend genital gender-affirming surgeries for people younger than 18, The Washington Post reported.
“I mean we talk about foreign countries like China that have child labor,” Greene said. “I’m sorry, this is worse than child labor. This is child abuse.”
Greene reserved some of her most scalding denunciations for fellow Republicans who failed to fall in line with Trump’s agenda during his presidency. In the early days of Trump’s administration, Greene went from “a little bit confused,” she said, “...to straight up being furious with Republicans in Congress.”
To ensure the party’s future success and secure a Republican majority, Green admonished the Wake GOP to support all Republican candidates — even if they didn’t match attendees’ political preferences.
“You go in there and you vote,” she said. “I don’t care how mad you are. I don’t care if you don’t like the Republicans you have to vote for. You have a job.”
The Wake GOP gala featured a “Roaring ‘20s” theme and was held at the Carolina Ballroom at Embassy Suites in Cary on Sept. 23.
Representatives of the Wake GOP did not respond to an email Tuesday from The N&O requesting comment on Greene’s attendance as a guest speaker. Before the gala, Wake GOP Chair Donna Williams, asked by The N&O if she had any concerns that featuring Greene might turn off some moderate voters, said, “you always have people who are happy and always have people who are not, that is just life. That’s the way people are, there’s nothing that anybody could ever do that would please the entire population.”
For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Under the Dome politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it at https://campsite.bio/underthedome or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story was originally published September 27, 2022 at 2:01 PM.
