Marjorie Taylor Greene says she may run for president after encouragement from Alex Jones
‘Can we get you to run for president in the next few years?’ Mr Jones asked Ms Greene
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Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said she may consider running for US president in the future after conspiracy theorist Alex Jones encouraged her to seek the nation’s highest office.
During an interview on Wednesday advertised as the “most censored broadcast in the world,” Mr Jones told Ms Greene that she would make a good candidate for president.
He told the Georgia Republican that she might have a “better chance at winning than even Trump.”
“Can we get you to run for president in the next few years?” he asked Ms Greene, lauding her “voting record.”
Mr Jones then pitched a “Greene/DeSantis” ticket, referencing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who – after former President Donald Trump – is the preferred candidate for Republicans in 2024.
Ms Greene laughed and smiled at the endorsement from the notorious conspiracy theorist, but said she was a “very strong supporter of President Trump.”
“But in the future we’ll definitely see what happens, we’ll see what the people think about something like that,” she said.
The wide-ranging interview included discussions on vaccines, election fraud and the Capitol riot, all rife with lies and misinformation.
Ms Greene lamented the “purge” in America’s military, federal and state agencies, and law enforcement caused by vaccine mandates. She said that the “alpha males who protect our country and our cities” who are “strong and courageous” are being forced out because they refuse to take the coronavirus vaccines.
She also said she agreed with Lara Logan’s comparison of Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, to Nazi “Angel of Death” Josef Mengele.
Ms Greene said the “man made Chinese virus” was engineered in a lab and was funded by Dr Fauci, repeating a conspiracy theory pushed by Republicans that Dr Fauci directly funded gain of function research that led to the coronavirus. Though she did not explicitly say so, she insinuated that the virus somehow escaped the lab and caused the global pandemic. She blamed Dr Fauci and other members of the CDC for stopping doctors from administering “life saving treatments” like Ivermectin - a dewormer that has not shown effective in combatting Covid-19 - and monoclonal antibodies, which were found ineffective against the Omicron variant. The congresswoman said the doctor should be held accountable and claimed he is “guilty of murder.”
When asked about the vaccines, Ms Greene said they are a “giant human experiment” and claimed they were intended for “emergency use only,” which is incorrect. The vaccines were given emergency authorisation, but they were cleared for widespread use, not just for “emergency use.”
She also drummed up common covid conspiracy theorist concerns over the VAERS system, a self-reporting system intended for doctors and researchers to judge potential issues with vaccines. She claims VAERS is full of stories of people dying or suffering injuries as a result of the vaccine, but she misunderstands the system. VAERS is a self-reporting system and a disclaimer on the site warns that information included may be incorrect or incomplete as there is no follow-up on the claims registered to the site.
Mr Jones and the congresswoman also discussed election fraud and the Capitol riot. Ms Greene again repeated the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, claiming election fraud was a major issue and that Republicans in Congress were not taking it seriously. No evidence of widespread election fraud has ever been found in connection with the 2020 election.
Mr Jones praised Ms Greene’s advocacy of Capitol riot defendants, who he described as “mostly peaceful.” The conspiracy theorist also repeated the long debunked theory that "antifa provocateurs" were among the individuals who stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021.
She claimed that the 6 January committee was not focusing on the “real questions,” which she says should focus on Ray Epps, an Arizona Oath Keeper who was at the Capitol riot. Mr Jones, Ms Greene and other Republicans have tried to make Mr Epps a scapegoat for the thousands of Trump supporters that attacked the Capitol on 6 January, arguing he was inciting the violence at the riot on behalf of the FBI.
Ms Greene also commented on immigration, comparing “illegals” to drug traffickers and terrorists, calling them the “worst people.” She told Mr Jones that the US should send troops to the southern border rather than to Ukraine. The US does not currently have plans to deploy troops to Ukraine, though Joe Biden has deployed military forces to Eastern Europe to shore up NATO’s defense capabilities in the face of Russia’s troop amassment on Ukraine’s eastern border.
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