The White House lashed out at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Monday for saying the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol would have been armed and successful if she planned it, arguing her rhetoric is violent.
Greene on Saturday appeared to hit back at claims that she and former Trump adviser Stephen Bannon were involved in planning the Jan. 6 riots.
“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 at a gala for the New York Young Republicans Club on Saturday.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates released a statement saying that all leaders have a responsibility to condemn her remarks, calling them dangerous and abhorrent.
“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,” 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.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also called the remarks “dangerous” and “vile,” reiterating that all leaders should condemn them.
“It is antithetical to our values as a country for a member of Congress to wish that the carnage of Jan. 6 would have been even worse,” she told reporters on Monday.
Greene is an outspoken ally of former President Trump and has long espoused his false claims of fraud during the 2020 presidential election. She was questioned earlier this year by the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 over her role in efforts to stop the certification of President Biden’s win.
Many of the rioters on Jan. 6 brought weapons, and leaders of the Oath Keepers militia group were found guilty last month for seditious conspiracy.
According to former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony in June, Trump complained that some of his armed supporters were unable to join the crowd at his Ellipse speech on Jan. 6.
The New York Young Republicans Club last month pushed back at the White House for saying that bigotry, hate, and antisemitism have no place in the U.S. following Trump’s dinner in Florida with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and the rapper Ye.
“Biden’s handlers aim to ban wrongthink; it has ‘no place in America,’ they say. The American government is obliged to defend individuals’ right to freedom of expression even when their views are contrarian & widely condemned,” the group said on Twitter.
Updated 4:25 p.m.