WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House condemned Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s claim that if she had been involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurgency, she would have “won,” calling her remarks “against our fundamental values as a country.”
The Georgia Republican’s comments came on the same day that she denied theories that she helped organise the Jan. 6, 2021 riot led by Donald Trump supporters as the former president tried to hang on to power after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden.
“I’ll tell you what, if Steve Bannon and I had organised it, we would have won.” Not to mention it would have been armed,” Greene said at the Young Republican Gala in New York. According to the New York Post, Bannon, Trump’s former top advisor, was present.
More:Family of slain police officer refuses to shake hands with McConnell, McCarthy of the Republican Party
Greene’s remarks, according to White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates, are a “slap in the face” to the police and other law enforcement who worked to protect the Capitol and the families who lost loved ones in the attack.
“It goes against our fundamental values as a country for a member of Congress to wish that the January 6th carnage had been even worse, and to boast that she would have succeeded in an armed insurgency against the United States government,” Bates said. “All leaders must condemn these dangerous, abhorrent remarks and defend our Constitution and the rule of law.”
Following the attack, five police officers who were stationed at the Capitol on January 6th were killed, and 140 others were injured. Four people were killed when they stormed the Capitol during the riot.
In response to the criticism, Greene issued a statement saying, “The White House needs to learn how sarcasm works.” “My remarks were aimed at Joe Biden and the Democrats, who have made me a political target since January 6th.”
“I will never back down from my support for the Second Amendment,” the congresswoman added. And I will never again let the White House, Democrats, or the media accuse me of something I had nothing to do with.”
Greene, a close Trump ally who believes in QAnon conspiracies, has frequently criticised the prosecution of the Jan. 6 defendants and echoed Trump’s false claims about election fraud in the 2020 election.
The White House has worked hard to highlight Greene’s influential role in the new Republican-led Congress, in an effort to make the polarising congresswoman the face of the GOP.
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy has promised to restore Greene’s House committee assignments, which were taken away by Democrats in 2021 due to a series of incendiary, conspiratorial, and menacing social media posts.
