Marjorie Taylor Greene, Who Spread a Conspiracy Theory Just Last Week, Says Her QAnon Days Are Over

QAnon queen Marjorie Taylor Greene says she has backed away from the sprawling conspiracy theory web, conveniently at the time she is set to hold a decent amount of power in Congress.

In a Sunday interview on Fox News, Greene said she had been “sucked into some things I had seen on the internet,” including QAnon. But, she assured host Howard Kurtz, those beliefs are “so far in the past.”

She also said she never campaigned on QAnon theories because they were “not something I believed in,” a claim on which Kurtz did not press her.

This is, of course, blatantly untrue. Not only was Greene the first open QAnon supporter to be elected to Congress, but she has also wholeheartedly embraced many other conspiracy theories, including that a plane did not crash into the Pentagon during the 9/11 attacks; that the 2021 California wildfires were caused by space lasers owned by Jewish people; and that the 2020 election was stolen.

Just last week, she spread a conspiracy theory that Covid-19 vaccines contributed to Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest. She also regularly pushes the old grooming conspiracy theory about LGBTQ people being pedophiles.

Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the January 6 investigative committee that Greene discussed the QAnon conspiracy group multiple times with Donald Trump and his then chief of staff Mark Meadows. During one of those conversations, Greene told Meadows that her QAnon supporters would be attending the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, which eventually turned into the Capitol riot.

The only thing that’s different now is that Greene stands to have outsize influence in Congress. She has been a staunch supporter of Kevin McCarthy’s bid for speaker of the House, which he finally won Friday after four days none of us will ever get back and the loss of all his dignity. In the run-up to the vote, Greene urged her colleagues to back McCarthy, causing heated clashes with her former far-right allies in the House.

Moderate Republicans have expressed a desire to work with Democrats to prevent extreme bills from passing. Having now positioned herself as more moderate (than a few months ago), Greene could have a say in those deals.

Thousands of supporters of Jair Bolsanaro, Brazil’s former far-right president, descended upon and invaded several government buildings on Sunday, in an attack on democracy that has been compared to January 6. Officials worldwide have condemned the attack and expressed support for President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government. This includes an array of Democratic officials, from Abigail Spanberger to Jamaal Bowman, starting all the way at the top:

It’s hard to link to all the other statements from Democrats, given how many have spoken out on the frenzied attack. And many are actively expressing their support for Lula as the rightful president, rather than just sharing amorphous defenses of democracy.

Meanwhile, there have been few Republicans speaking out in defense of democracy, or even issuing hodgepodge statements on law and order. Republican leadership has remained completely silent, with no statements from Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy. Donald Trump, who incited our own January 6, 2021, attack, has similarly been quiet.

The few statements from Republicans have come from Representatives George Santos and Brian Fitzpatrick and Senator Rick Scott.

It’s very easy to be cynical, to view Republicans’ general silence in response to a massive coordinated attack on Brazil’s democracy as unsurprising, given how many of them tacitly if not actively supported a similar attack on their own soil just two years ago. Yet it’s worth reaffirming as often and clearly as possible how radically extreme this party is that you can count with one hand how many of its members say they care about the will of the people.

Early Saturday morning, Kevin McCarthy finally crossed the threshold to become speaker of the House. The result comes on the fifth day, in the fifteenth round of voting, of what has become the fifth-longest speaker election in American history, and the longest since before the Civil War.

McCarthy secured 216 votes, with several earlier Republicans defectors instead voting “present” and lowering the number of votes he needed to win. Throughout the week, McCarthy had struggled to eclipse even 200 votes, starting first at 203, before dropping to 202 and even 201 as a group of 19 Republicans continually voted against him, round after round. Meanwhile, Democrats proffered a united front, giving Hakeem Jeffries 212 votes over and over again.

Finally, on Friday afternoon, in the twelfth vote, some movement began to occur as McCarthy continued to cave in to the demands of his defectors. As pressure mounted, just enough Republicans voted late Friday night into Saturday morning to push McCarthy through and secure the speakership that continued to evade him.

But the speakership vote is not even half the battle. If there was this much chaos just to elect the House speaker, imagine what this portends for any other vote or House business. Indeed, further pandemonium may be closer on the horizon than McCarthy was counting on:

If the rules package McCarthy put together to secure the speakership fails after he secures the speakership, there’s no telling what other hurdles may lie ahead. There’s been so much attention placed upon the 19 Republican defectors that McCarthy may have taken for granted the nearly 200 other members of his party, let alone the 212 Democrats, who might have other ideas.

Good luck, Kevin.

Kevin McCarthy was denied the House speakership for the thirteenth time Friday, as six Republicans continued to hold out against him.

The California Republican, who has been open about wanting to be speaker, received only 203 votes or fewer during the first 11 rounds of voting. His party holds 222 seats in the House of Representatives, and he needs 218 to win. He’ll need two of the remaining six Republicans to win the speakership.

Although he lost votes over the first three days, 15 previous holdouts finally switched to backing him on Friday, including Byron Donalds, who had been nominated as a long-shot challenger for two days. They all received standing ovations when they voted.

But six Republicans remain staunchly opposed to McCarthy, thwarting him at every round. McCarthy has been projecting confidence that he’ll eventually win, but it has been a grueling run.

Here are the six Republicans who continue to oppose McCarthy’s bid for speakership.

• Andy Biggs
• Lauren Boebert
• Eli Craine
• Matt Gaetz
• Bob Good
• Matt Rosendale

Gaetz and Boebert are among the strongest holdouts, nominating other Republicans for House speaker throughout this ordeal. The momentum on Friday, however, has inspired McCarthy allies.

Here are the 15 Republicans who switched to voting “yes” for McCarthy as speaker.

• Dan Bishop
• Josh Brecheen
• Michael Cloud
• Andrew Clyde
• Byron Donalds
• Paul Gosar
• Andy Harris
• Anna Paulina Luna
• Mary Miller
• Ralph Norman
• Andy Ogles
• Scott Perry
• Chip Roy
• Keith Self
• Victoria Spartz

This post has been updated.

The U.S. labor force is starting 2023 on a high note, with unemployment reaching its lowest point in 50 years in December, according to a report released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Nonfarm payrolls added 223,000 jobs in December, bringing the unemployment rate to 3.468 percent, the lowest level since 1969 (albeit by a very slim margin, the third decimal point). Comparatively, the unemployment rate in February 2020—just before the pandemic began in earnest in the United States—was 3.5 percent. In December 2019, the unemployment rate was 3.6 percent.

The sectors that added the most jobs were leisure and hospitality, health care, and construction. Employment in retail held steady, while state education employment declined by 24,000 jobs. University employees have gone on strike in recent months over workplace conditions. One of the biggest demonstrations took place throughout the entire University of California system and saw tens of thousands of academic workers walk out to demand pay increases.

The low unemployment rate isn’t the only piece of good news: The national average gas price, a sore spot for President Joe Biden, has also fallen lower than in January 2022.

National gas prices have dipped lower than they were a year ago. As of Friday, the national average price per gallon was $3.30, according to AAA.

Both the employment gains and the falling gas prices are huge wins for Biden, who has been under fire since he took office for sky-high inflation and unemployment, first due to Covid-19 and then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Inflation finally seems to be cooling, as well, and the Federal Reserve eased off its massive rate hikes at its December policy-setting meeting. The U.S. central bank is eager to achieve a so-called soft landing, or a decrease in inflation without tipping the economy into a recession.

The fact that the labor market has remained strong overall has caused concerns that the economy has not slowed sufficiently to avoid a downturn, but Dean Baker, the senior economist at the Center for Economic Policy and Research, put the chances of a recession at “less than 50 percent.”

“I think the overall picture suggests the economy can keep growing at a healthy pace,” he said of the December jobs report, but that will depend on the Fed maintaining a slower pace with rate hikes.