A running list of Marjorie Taylor Greene's controversies

The rise of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) from total obscurity to widely-mocked House backbencher to influential Republican powerbroker has been not only meteoric but frequently stunning, given her inability or refusal to change her often outlandish rhetoric. Despite a substantial history of outrageous remarks and incendiary actions, Greene has quickly become a national figure rumored to be in the mix as the GOP candidate for Georgia's 2026 U.S. Senate race. Stripped of her committee assignments in 2021 when the House of Representatives was controlled by Democrats, Greene's participation in House business was restored after Republicans recaptured the chamber in 2022. Her ever-expanding role as a prominent figure in the national Republican Party mirrors the transformation of the GOP itself into a vehicle for her brand of confrontational politics and conspiracy-driven information warfare.

The co-owner of a general contracting firm and CrossFit franchise before she was elected to the House, Greene rose to prominence as a conservative media figure during the first Trump administration when she published a series of articles for a website called American Truth Seekers. At the now-shuttered website, she "wrote favorably of the QAnon conspiracy theory, suggested that Hillary Clinton murdered her political enemies and ruminated on whether mass shootings were orchestrated to dismantle the Second Amendment," said NBC News. She further boosted her profile prior to her 2020 House campaign with viral stunts, including "a since-deleted Facebook Live" video in which she tried to visit Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in her office and referred to it as "a day care" while "mocking the staff for keeping the door locked," said CNN. But her relentless antics have never seemed to bother voters in her district — she ran unopposed in the 2024 Republican primary for her seat and won a third term in the general election by almost 30 points.

Allegedly conducted extramarital affairs at a CrossFit gym

In 2012, Greene reportedly had affairs with two men at the CrossFit gym where she was employed in Alpharetta, Georgia, "one with a tantric sex guru named Craig Ivey, and another with a gym manager named Justin Tway," said the Independent. She filed for divorce from her husband, Perry, that year but the couple got back together before finalizing a divorce in December 2022. Greene denied the allegations. The episode did not prevent Greene from publicly accusing Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) of having an affair with a Chinese spy during a House Homeland Security committee meeting on April 25, 2023. Republicans had hoped to land blows against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, whom they would later impeach, but "Greene's performance sidetracked that conversation," said Fox News.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Promoted QAnon and other conspiracy theories

The QAnon conspiracy theory held that an "anonymous person called Q was revealing secrets about a child trafficking ring orchestrated by Democrats and global elites," said The Washington Post. Prior to her election to Congress, Greene contributed to the extremist website American Truth Seekers, where she promoted QAnon beliefs. She also "further pushed conspiracy theories on her Facebook page," including the idea that the 2019 mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, that killed 51 people was a false-flag operation designed to undermine American gun rights, said Rolling Stone. Greene also used social media to back conspiracy theories about 9/11 as well as "casting doubt on school shootings," said The Washington Post. "I was allowed to believe things that weren't true and I would ask questions about them and talk about them, and that is absolutely what I regret," said Greene when her past behavior caused Democrats to strip her of her committee assignments in February, 2021.

Blamed California wildfires on space lasers

In a 2018 Facebook post written before her election to Congress, Greene speculated that the deadly Camp Fire was deliberately sparked by Jewish elites in cahoots with the governor of California and power company PG&E to clear land for a high-speed rail project. Her conclusions were based on the observation that "oddly there are all these people who have said they saw what looked like lasers or blue beams causing the fires," leading many observers to claim that Greene believed in "Jewish space lasers." Critics blasted the ludicrous ideas in her post. "Aren't there easier ways to get your rail stations approved by the state legislature?" said Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine. Greene's post was not just absurd but also anti-semitic because "people have used claims that this one particular wealthy family controls the world to cast aspersions on Jews in general" for centuries, said Zack Beauchamp at Vox.

Compared masks and vaccine mandates to the Holocaust

On May 20, 2021, during an interview with David Brody of the far-right news network Real America Voice, Greene complained about the requirement to wear masks during House proceedings. Forcing Jews to wear gold stars and sending them by rail to concentration camps "is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about," said Greene. She later apologized, saying "there are words that I have said, remarks that I have made, that I know are offensive, and for that, I want to apologize." She continued to use analogies to compare vaccine mandates to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. "People have a choice, they don't need your medical brown shirts showing up at their door ordering vaccinations," said Greene in a July 6, 2021, post on X.

Lied about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election

Following President Donald Trump's defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Greene quickly embraced his lies about Democrats using fraud to change the outcome. "I will not certify a stolen election," she wrote in a January 3, 2021, post on X. There remains no credible evidence that there was systematic fraud in the 2020 election. "Biden won the election, fairly and legally," said CNN.

Greene was one of the 139 House Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election during the counting of electoral votes on January 6, 2021, a process which was interrupted by the Capitol insurrection. Greene continued to insist that the 2020 election was stolen, and prior to the 2024 election claimed in an interview with far-right extremist Alex Jones that voting machines were switching early votes in Georgia. After Trump's victory in 2024, she did not make any further accusations of election fraud.

Blamed the January 6, 2021, insurrection on Black Lives Matter and Antifa

Greene has vacillated between blaming the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot on left-wing agitators and complaining about how Black Lives Matter protesters allegedly got away with violence during the summer of 2020. Initially, she scoffed at the idea that Trump supporters could really have been behind the riot. "If the #Jan6 organizers were Trump supporters, then why did they attack us while we were objecting to electoral college votes for Joe Biden?" she said in a February 9, 2021, post on X. Greene still sometimes groundlessly blames the insurrection on left-wing agitators. "I fully believe they were Antifa/BLM [Black Lives Matter] rioters," said Greene in a November 2023 appearance on Triggered, Donald Trump, Jr.'s podcast.

Endorsed violence against Democrats

In social media posts prior to her election to Congress, Greene repeatedly endorsed violence against prominent Democratic officials, including former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In one video posted to Facebook in 2019, Greene accused Pelosi of treason, which is "a crime punishable by death," said Greene. In another 2020 Facebook post prior to her election, Greene posted a picture of herself holding an assault rifle next to pictures of Reps. Rashida Tlaib (R-Mich.), Ilhan Omar (D-MInn.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) with the caption "Squad's Worst Nightmare." That history of violent rhetoric and imagery was part of the reason Democrats voted to remove her from committees in 2021.

Suggested Democrats manipulated Hurricane Helene to influence the 2024 election

Greene's history of building conspiracies around natural disasters got longer in October 2024, when Hurricane Helene ravaged parts of the U.S. Southeast a month before the presidential election, including the electoral battleground state of North Carolina. "Yes they can control the weather," said Greene in an October 3, 2024 post on X. "It's ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can't be done." The post remains live and undeleted on her timeline. The congresswoman "is no stranger to misinformation" and her comments were "met with a wave of criticism," said The Guardian. Her comments even prompted some in her own party to disavow the conspiracy, including Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.). "Nobody can control the weather," said Edwards in an October 8, 2024 press release. Many observers, however, were not shocked. "Some things in this world that are inevitable: death, sunrise and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene responding to tragedies with pure insanity," said Rolling Stone.

Claimed the death of Pope Francis was a blow struck by God against evil

Following the death of Pope Francis on April 21, 2025, Greene posted inflammatory remarks on X suggesting that his passing was a deliberate part of God's battle against wickedness. "Today, there were major shifts in global leaderships," said Greene. "Evil is being defeated by the hand of God." Greene never elaborated on exactly what she meant and "did not issue any clarification after coming under fire for the post," said The New Republic. "While it's unclear if the post was directly referencing Pope Francis," she has "been critical of church leadership" during the reign of Francis, said Yahoo News. According to the congresswoman, she left the church years ago after she became a mother, "because I realized that I could not trust the Church leadership to protect my children from pedophiles," said Greene in an April 27, 2022 post on X. That post was itself an attempt to mitigate the fallout from an interview she had given in which she claimed that "Satan's controlling the church."