Kevin McCarthy said to give QAnon congresswoman a chance. It's not going well.

When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was first elected to Congress, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy embraced her and told Americans to give Greene an “opportunity” to serve before judging her.

But less than a month into her first term, that “opportunity” is not going well, and McCarthy is being forced to respond to controversy after controversy stemming from Greene’s violent rhetoric and dangerous actions.

Democratic lawmakers have called for Greene to either resign or be expelled from Congress after CNN unearthed Facebook posts Greene either made or liked calling for prominent Democratic lawmakers to be killed, the kind of violent rhetoric that helped incite supporters of Donald Trump to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a failed coup attempt.

“Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is a staunch QAnon believer. She apparently supports executing Democratic elected officials. Why does GOP leader Kevin McCarthy continue to support her?” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) tweeted early Wednesday morning. 

Greene has defended herself by claiming that the comments she made were from before she was in office and thus don’t count, and blamed them on people who “manage” her social media accounts.

But that defense is not pacifying Democratic lawmakers.

“Rhetoric inviting political violence is never acceptable. The attack on January 6 shows how dangerous it can be. Marjorie Taylor Greene must resign,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) tweeted Tuesday night.

Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) echoed those sentiments: “After the U.S. Capitol attack, I called for Congressmembers like @RepMTG to be expelled for inciting this act of domestic terrorism. In light of these dangerous comments she made about @SpeakerPelosi & @RepMaxineWaters, I’m renewing my call & asking @HouseGOP members to join me.”

Greene has courted controversy since she arrived in Washington, D.C.

She endangered her colleagues by refusing to wear a mask to stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus, and she’s refused to go through a metal detector before going onto the House floor to make sure she’s unarmed.

On Jan. 19, Media Matters for America reported on Greene’s support for the false conspiracy theory that the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 was a “false flag” event to build support for gun control.

Yet even before McCarthy demanded that Americans give Greene a chance in Congress, her racist and anti-Semitic comments were public knowledge.

She said that Muslims do “not belong in our government”; that the election of Muslims to Congress in 2018 was “an Islamic invasion of our government”; and that Black people are “lazy” and make “bad choices.”

She called Holocaust survivor and prominent Democratic donor George Soros a “piece of crap” who “turned in his own people over to the Nazis.” That is not true.

She expressed support for the false QAnon conspiracy theory that Trump was working with someone called “Q” to bring down a cabal of Democratic politicians and celebrities that QAnon followers claimed were running a child sex-trafficking ring.

QAnon followers played a major role in the deadly insurrection at the Capitol, with many of those arrested believing in the dangerous conspiracy.

Now McCarthy is facing pressure to take action against Greene.

A spokesperson for the House minority leader told Axios that McCarthy will have a “conversation” with her.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.