Mitch McConnell says conspiracy theories are ‘cancer’ for Republicans

Greene claimed some school shootings were faked

Credit: REUTERS

Mitch McConnell, the top Senate Republican, said on Monday that conspiracy theories are a "cancer" on his party in a tacit attack on a Congresswoman from his party who has peddled election misinformation and claimed that the September 11 attack was a hoax.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican representative for Georgia, has also supported conspiracy theories such as QAnon and claimed that school shootings were faked.

It comes as the Republican Party’s civil war deepened on Monday night after Reuters reported that dozens of officials in President George W Bush’s administration said they were leaving the party, dismayed by a failure of many elected Republicans to disown Donald Trump after his false claims of election fraud sparked a deadly storming of the US Capitol last month.

“The Republican Party as I knew it no longer exists. I’d call it the cult of Trump,” said Jimmy Gurulé, who was Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence in the Bush administration.

Ms Greene is a supporter of Mr Trump and claims to have had his backing. Her controversial comments have emerged in recent days and provoked the Democrats into trying to remove her from seats on the education and budget committees of the House of Representatives.

McConnell attacked "loony lies" spread by some people in his party

Credit: EPA

Mr McConnell, who did not name Ms Greene directly, said: "Loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party and our country." 

"Somebody who’s suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr’s airplane is not living in reality," he said.

Ms Greene struck back at Mr McConnell on Twitter, saying: "The real cancer for the Republican Party is weak Republicans who only know how to lose gracefully."

She earlier warned Democrats that Republicans could remove them from committee positions if they win control of the House in 2022 elections.

"And we will regain the majority, make no mistake about that," she wrote on Twitter.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat, has introduced a resolution to remove the newly-elected Republican representative from her committee seats.

"We can’t stop her from speaking," Ms Wasserman Schultz told reporters. "What we can do, though, is essentially render her nearly powerless. That’s what the intent of this resolution is."

Ms Wasserman Schultz’s approach would require a simple majority vote to pass the House, where Democrats hold 221 seats to Republicans’ 211.

That makes the measure far easier to pass then a separate effort, circulated by Democrat Jimmy Gomez, to expel Ms Greene, which would require a two-thirds vote to pass.

Ms Greene has supported false online claims that school shootings were staged, including the 2012 killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

CNN reported last week that Ms Greene in online posts before running for office expressed support for executing Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"If you cannot acknowledge basic truths, that 26 children and adults were murdered in Sandy Hook Elementary School, and 17 more were mercilessly slain in Parkland High School, then you cannot be trusted to make education and budget policy," said Ms Wasserman Schultz, who represents a Florida district next door to the district where Parkland is located.

Ms Greene appeared to try to backtrack on Monday on some of her previous online comments, telling an interviewer that school shootings were "terrible" but that they did not have to happen if there could be a "good guy" at a school with a gun to protect students.

"These are not red-flag incidences, they are not fake and it’s terrible, the loss that these families go through," Ms Greene told One American News Network.

"And it doesn’t have to happen if we would protect our children properly."

The House Rules Committee set a hearing on the Democratic measure for Wednesday, indicating it could be on the floor of the chamber for a vote later in the week.