To follow on from a comment on an earlier post, and because, as I noted there, more than one person has expressed some level of sympathy for Marjorie Taylor Greene, I feel the need to lay down some reminders.
Charlie Sykes at MS NOW provides a helpful run-down:
And while we ought to extend some grace to her, we are not required to embrace full-spectrum amnesia when it comes to one of the more brazen traffickers of conspiracy theories and bigotry. Perhaps now Greene really is experiencing sincere regret. But this is the same MTG who once suggested the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was staged.
She (falsely) suggested that a deadly 2018 fire in California might have been caused by lasers from space. She has (falsely) suggested that 9/11 was a hoax and that Democrats controlled the weather to suppress the GOP vote with hurricanes. She mused openly about a “national divorce” between red and blue states and (without evidence) accused the Clinton family of being involved in murders. She claimed Ruth Bader Ginsburg had been replaced by a body double so that liberals could keep her seat on the Supreme Court.
The way she harassed David Hogg sticks in my head as well.
I will admit that she has been more sympathetic to me in the last couple of weeks, but I also have to consider that some of that is just the partisan filter through which we all view events. She has been, after all, criticizing Trump, and that is a viscerally appealing to a lot of us. Although I have been highly wary of what has looked like some kind of rehabilitation tour, such as her appearance on Bill Maher’s show, where she claimed not to know that citing the Rothschilds was a known antisemitic trope.
Maybe MTG has been a huge dupe, and she is now figuring this fact out. What she does next will tell the tale, and will determine how much sympathy I am personally willing to extend.
There is a scenario in which she could be a force for good, explaining what she has learned to her followers.
I fear the more likely scenario, based on her revealed character from past actions, is a further monetization of her fame.
Or, maybe she fades into the background.
Time will tell.
