Greene says Jan. 6 remarks were ‘sarcasm’

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Monday said her recent comment that the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack would have been armed and successful if she planned it was “sarcasm,” after she drew rebukes from the White House and Democratic leaders.

“The White House needs to learn how sarcasm works,” Greene said in a statement. “My comments were making fun of Joe Biden and the Democrats, who have continuously made me a political target since January 6.”

Greene made the comments about the Jan. 6 attack at a gala for the New York Young Republican Club on Saturday, apparently hitting back at claims that she and former Trump adviser Stephen Bannon were involved in planning the insurrection.

“And I will tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed,” she said.

The White House condemned her remarks earlier on Monday.

“It goes against our fundamental values as a country for a Member of Congress to wish that the carnage of January 6th had been even worse, and to boast that she would have succeeded in an armed insurrection against the United States government,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said.

“This violent rhetoric is a slap in the face to the Capitol Police, the DC Metropolitan Police, the National Guard, and the families who lost loved ones as a result of the attack on the Capitol,” he added.

Many of the Jan. 6 rioters traveled to the Capitol with firearms, with some convicted on weapons charges.

Greene, a fervent ally of former President Trump, has long promoted his unfounded claims of mass electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential election and has at times defended Jan. 6 participants, including likening their actions to following the Declaration of Independence’s call to “overthrow tyrants.”

Those comments have led to repeated attacks from Democrats, and Greene earlier this year testified under oath about Jan. 6 after a group tried to remove her from the ballot under a constitutional clause barring people who have “engaged in insurrection” against the U.S. from holding federal office.

When asked during the hearing if she had heard in advance of plans to enter the Capitol and engage in violence, Greene said she “never heard that from anybody.”

House Democrats and 11 Republicans in the month following the Capitol attack voted to strip Greene of her committee assignments for her embrace of the QAnon conspiracy theory and apparent endorsements of violence against Democrats.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who is hoping to become Speaker in the next Congress, has vowed to restore Greene’s committee assignments.

“I will never back down from my support of the Second Amendment,” Greene said on Monday. “And I will never allow the White House, Democrats or the media to continue to accuse me of something I had nothing to do with.”

This story was updated at 1:43 p.m.