US congresswoman doubles down on ‘pedophiles’ smear

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene insists that her political opposition started the name-calling row

Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has defended her labeling of Democrats as a “party of pedophiles,” refusing to disavow the statement when 60 Minutes host Lesley Stahl suggested it was “over-the-top” during an interview on Sunday. 

“They are not pedophiles,” Stahl insisted, asking why the Georgia representative would say such a thing.

Greene countered that Democrats “support grooming children,” even singling out President Joe Biden for supporting “transgender surgeries” on kids. “Sexualizing children is what pedophiles do to children,” the congresswoman insisted.

While Stahl met her persistence with an eye roll and a call to drop the “personal attacks,” Greene pointed out that she had not started the war of words. “All they’ve done is call me names and insult me nonstop since I’ve been here,” she said, listing some of the epithets, including racist, anti-Semitic, and transphobic, which she has attracted during her brief career in Washington.

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Greene vowed last month to reintroduce legislation to ban the provision of ‘gender-affirming care’ to children, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and certain surgeries. 

The ‘Protect Children’s Innocence Act’, defeated last year under a Democrat-controlled House, would impose strict prison sentences and fines for medical professionals who treat children in violation of the act and would also forbid the use of federal funds for gender-affirming healthcare of any kind. 

The congresswoman last year denounced Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, as “pro-pedophile” for her court decisions “protect[ing] evil child predators,” suggesting any senator who voted to confirm her was also complicit in pedophilia.

Elected to Congress in 2020 with the help of an endorsement from then-President Donald Trump, Greene was pressured to disavow social media posts expressing support for QAnon, a conspiracy theory which claims that high-ranking Democrats (and some Republicans) are actually part of a cabal of devil-worshiping pedophiles. She has since said she regrets publicly supporting the movement.

Democrats renewed their efforts to run Greene out of Washington following the January 6 riot, when she expressed support for the protesters who overran the Capitol in the hope of preventing Biden from becoming president, and blamed federal agents for the ensuing violence. She was subsequently stripped of her committee assignments over her support for the rioters, and Twitter and Facebook later banned her from their platforms. 

However, some political opponents thought this censure was not enough, calling for her to be barred from running for re-election to Congress during the 2022 midterms under the 14th Amendment, which forbids anyone “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding political office.