‘Sick, divisive, alarming’: White House condemns Marjorie Taylor Greene’s call to split US between red and blue states

White House says the president ‘ran for office to restore the soul of the nation, not to let Republicans in Congress rip our country apart at the seams’

The White House has strongly condemned Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s call for a “national divorce” that separates “red states and blue states” as “sick, divisive, and alarming”.

White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson called for Republicans to clarify whether they agreed with the controversial Georgia representative, according to a US media report.

“Congresswoman Greene’s comments are sick, divisive, and alarming to hear from a member of the House Oversight and Homeland Security Committees,” Ms Patternson told The Daily Beast in a statement.

“Congressional Republicans have an obligation to say clearly whether they agree with Congresswoman Ms Greene’s calls to dissolve the union or condemn her vile push to further divide our nation,” Ms Patterson said.

She said the president “ran for office to restore the soul of the nation, not to let Republicans in Congress rip our country apart at the seams”.

The White House has not issued a public statement yet, but Ms Greene’s comments calling for a “national divorce” that came during Joe Biden’s visit to Ukraine generated a storm, with some interpreting the statement as a call for a second Civil War.

“We need a national divorce,” the Republican legislator tweeted on Monday. “We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government.”

“Everyone I talk to says this,” she claimed.

“From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s (sic) traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”

The comments have been widely criticised, including by fellow Republicans and conservatives, with Utah governor Spencer Cox calling her rhetoric “destructive and wrong and – honestly –evil”.

Interestingly, Georgia, Ms Greene’s home state, voted for Mr Biden in 2020, technically making it a “blue” state.

Ms Greene responded to the backlash by stating in a tweet thread that she was calling for “not a civil war but a legal agreement to separate our ideological and political disagreements by states while maintaining our legal union”.

Known for her controversial conspiracy theories and support for Q-Anon and 6 January rioters, Ms Greene, an ally of Donald Trump, has emerged as an influential figure in the GOP in recent months and is rising through the ranks with positions in the homeland security committee and on the oversight committee.