- Marjorie Taylor Greene posted online tribute.
- Praised January 6 participants as “patriots”.
- Post comes before fifth attack anniversary.
- Framed rioters as victims of injustice.
Following a disagreement with President Donald Trump on several matters last year, Greene tendered his resignation on Monday. By applauding the rioters' "patriotism," she appeared to be implying that she might not be done with their shared "America First" cause just yet, despite her declaration that she had no intention of remaining in politics.
After her apparent betrayal of the 47th president, it's questionable if the MAGA movement will ever welcome her back.
She went on to reminisce about a group of prisoners who asked her to sing the national anthem with them and about one of them carrying a hand-drawn Stars-and-Stripes flag.
“Their melodic voices which combined their deep sadness and their unwavering patriotic conviction is a sound I’ll never forget,”
she said.
Greene concluded by observing,
“Your government can break you. It can shatter your life. There should never be a two tiered justice system in America where one set of political protesters are freed from their charges and the other set of political protesters are crushed as an example to never rise up against your government.
Instead it is your right to hold your government accountable to you, the American people.”
On January 6, Trump supporters invaded the Capitol after then-Vice President Mike Pence certified former President Joe Biden's election victory, resulting in five fatalities and numerous injuries, including over 100 police officers.
Some of the rioters broke into the parliamentary complex before order could be restored, wandering the corridors and damaging offices, including Nancy Pelosi's, the speaker of the House at the time. As demonstrators and law officials engaged in violent altercations on the stairs outside, lawmakers and aides gathering inside the complex were forced to flee for their safety.
Over 1,500 people were ultimately charged for their roles in the altercation, but Trump pardoned all of them as soon as he retook office in January of last year.
Of those, two were charged with rape, five with illegal weapon possession, five with drunk driving, and six with child sex charges.
Despite Trump's inability to demonstrate that Biden's election victory was fraudulent, Greene has consistently backed the riots and has a habit of using the day to make divisive remarks.
She dismissed it in October 2021 as "just a riot," claiming that Americans were still urged to "overthrow tyrants" by the Declaration of Independence. She expressed disapproval in April 2022 of the "over-dramatization of a riot that happened here at the Capitol one time."
When she claimed that "we would have won" if she and Steve Bannon had organized the Capitol siege, she caused concern at a Young Republican Club luncheon in New York in December 2022. It would also have been armed.
In her November 2023 book MTG, Greene made the false claim that no Democratic members of Congress had helped guard the House of Representatives during an attempted break-in.
“Several of the Republican congressmen said, ‘We’re going to stay right here and defend the House chamber,’”
she wrote.
“As they began barricading the door with furniture, I noticed not one Democrat was willing to stay to defend the chamber.”
Many members of the chamber at the time disagreed with her account, pointing out that Democratic congressman Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger, and Seth Moulton and Ruben Gallego, all former Marines, were crucial in assisting their colleagues in avoiding danger.
Greene continued by defending Trump's mass pardoning and threatening Matthew Graves, the former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia who prosecuted the participants.
“All of y’all’s obsession with January 6 is absurd,”
she told a journalist last January.
“Everybody outside of here is sick and f*****g tired of it… Everybody up here has their panties in a wad.”
How have other Republicans reacted to Greene's tribute?
Intimately proved response from other Republicans to this specific new homage post has been limited so far, but it astronomically fits into being patterns
Donald Trump has preliminarily praised January 6 defendants as “ hostages ” and pushed absolutions, so Greene’s architecture of them as “ nationalistic ” aligns with his long ‑ standing rhetoric rather than provoking an open break from remaining MAGA abettors .
Other hard ‑ right Republicans who have echoed analogous language about a “ two ‑ tiered justice system ” have tended either to support or at least not denounce her station in public, treating it as part of the broader narrative about contended persecution of their base.