WASHINGTON – A day after the House decided to ban her from the congressional committees, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene sent a defiant message to both parties on Friday, warning them that the punishment had only “freed” them, Republicans followed suit to push right and insist on their allegiance to former President Donald J. Trump.
In a far-reaching press conference outside the Capitol, Ms. Greene, a first-time Republican from Georgia, said Thursday’s House vote to remove her from two bodies robbed her constituents of an important vote in Congress. it had helped her personally.
“In the future, I have been set free,” said Ms. Greene, adding, “I will hold the Republican Party accountable and push them to the right.”
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Ms. Greene’s comments and determination to remain in the limelight erased all hopes of the House Republican leaders that she would calm down after being rebuked on behalf of Party unity. And it underscored the sway the former president, who extolled Ms. Greene, still has some of the loudest voices in Congress.
“The party is his,” said Ms. Greene. “It doesn’t belong to anyone else.”
On Thursday, eleven Republicans voted with all of the Democrats in the chamber to strike Ms. Greene’s committees after a stream of social media posts advocated dangerous conspiracy theories and political violence, including the execution of Top -Democrats.
Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, had refused to discipline them and forced an uncomfortable vote for House Republicans who choose between defending Ms. Greene or alienating her constituents who share similar beliefs , had to decide.
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As a result, there were deep divisions among Republicans over how to move forward as a party. In the days leading up to the vote on Ms. Greene, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, the most powerful Republican in Washington, denounced what he called “crazy lies” and claimed that such conspiracy theories were a “cancer” for the party.
Several other high-ranking Republican senators had joined him in reprimanding Ms. Greene and saying she could not become the face of the party.
Ms. Greene has shown varying degrees of remorse for adopting QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy movement, in the past and for her previous comments advocating the killing of spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi, falsely suggesting several Mass shootings secretly carried out by the government were actors and spread a number of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic conspiracy theories.
In emotional utterances on the floor of the house, Ms. Greene regretted some of her previous comments Thursday and turned down many of her most eccentric and disgusting statements. For example, she admitted that there were attacks on September 11, 2001, but did not apologize and said that she was “allowed to believe things that were not true.”
When asked by a CNN reporter on Friday whether she would apologize for some of her most insulting comments before she was elected to Congress, Ms. Greene first urged the reporter to stand up for the network’s coverage of the Trump-Russia investigation to excuse.
But when another journalist squeezed her, she clearly apologized for the first time.
“Of course I am sorry for saying all the things that are wrong and offensive,” said Ms. Greene. “And I mean that sincerely, and I like to say that. I think it’s good to say when we’ve done something wrong. “
But hours earlier it had sounded a different note.
“I woke up this morning and literally laughed as I thought about what a bunch of idiots the Democrats (+11) are for giving someone like me free time,” she wrote on Twitter. “In this tyrannical Democratic government, conservative Republicans have no say in committees anyway. Oh this will be fun! “
Glenn Thrush contributed to the coverage.
