Rep. Cori Bush moves office away from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for "team's safety"
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Marjorie Taylor Greene. Photo: Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Democratic Rep. Cori Bush announced Friday that she has moved her office away from QAnon-supporting conspiracy theorist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene “for the safety” of her team.
Driving the news: The Missouri congresswoman said Greene and her staff "berated" her after she confronted the Republican for not wearing a mask in a Capitol Hill tunnel earlier this month.
- “This took place one day after multiple of my House colleagues announced they had tested positive for COVID-19 after being in a room with Taylor Greene during the white supremacist attack on the Capitol,” Bush said in a statement.
- “Out of concern for the health of my staff, other members of Congress, and their congressional staff, I repeatedly called out to her to put on a mask. Taylor Green and her staff responded by berating me, with one staffer yelling, ‘Stop inciting violence with Black Lives Matter.'”
Greene tweeted a video of what she said was the incident, accusing Bush of berating her.
- Greene's mask does not cover her mouth or nose in the video.
- The congresswoman from Georgia also sent a "message to the mob" on Friday in which she said she would “lead the charge to be a voice for the Silent Majority.”
The big picture: Friday's announcement is the latest controversy surrounding Greene, who has emerged as not just an embarrassment but a challenge for the GOP.
- The freshman Republican lawmaker received renewed scrutiny this week after several media outlets resurfaced old Facebook posts in which Greene promoted conspiracy theories and indicated support for executing several Democratic politicians.
- Many Democrats have demanded Greene be removed from her assigned committees, and some have called for her expulsion from Congress.
Some Republican and evangelical groups have also ramped up pressure to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments.
- GOP House Leader Kevin McCarthy's team told Axios' Alayna Treene that the minority leader plans to sit down with Greene next week before making any decisions about potentially removing her from committees or taking any action reprimanding her.
- This is the same process McCarthy took with former Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who was stripped of his committee assignments in 2019 for his history of racist remarks, including wondering publicly why terms like “white nationalism” and “white supremacy” had suddenly “become offensive.”
Go deeper: GOP ignored its early fears about Marjorie Taylor Greene
