Freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., suggested to an Alabama crowd that they could whip out a gun on door-to-door vaccination volunteers if they show up at Alabamans' homes to ask them what their vaccination status is.
"[President] Joe Biden wants to come talk to you guys," she said at the Alabama Federation of Republican Women on Tuesday. "He's going to be sending one of his police state friends to your front door to knock on the door, take down your name, your address, your family members' names, your phone numbers, your cellphone numbers, probably ask for your Social Security number and whether you've taken the vaccine or not."
"Yeah, well, what they don't know is in the south we all love our Second Amendment rights," she added. "We're not real big on strangers showing up on our front door, are we? They might not like the welcome they get."
Greene's recent comments stem from a speech delivered by Biden in early July, in which the president encouraged a door-to-door outreach program in order to increase the vaccination rate throughout the nation. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki later clarified Biden's speech, explaining that the program would dispatch volunteers who are "local, trusted messengers: doctors, faith leaders, [and] community leaders." No one, she said, would be legally compelled to get a vaccine.
Regardless, a number of right-winger pundits and politicians, including Greene, pounced on the speech, framing Biden's vaccination rollout as a slide toward authoritarianism.
Following Greene's latest comments, Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., accused Greene of "encouraging violence."
"We are watching the radicalization of the Republican Party in real time. GOP Rep @mtgreenee is encouraging violence," Lieu tweeted on Thursday. "(FYI: It's murder to shoot someone for knocking on your door.) How many Republican Members of Congress will condemn her insane remarks?"
At the event, Greene also demurred the nation's leading Covid expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, pushing the theory that National Institutes of Health aided and abetted in the creation of the coronavirus at the Wuhan Institute of Virology – a claim that Fauci has repeatedly denied.
"That is [Fauci's] baby," Greene said, referring to the virus. "That is his experiment, and he's getting to watch it in the real world, like on a live television show where he has a front row seat. He gets to watch what happens."
Last month, Greene – who lost her committee seats as a result of spreading baseless and dangerous conspiracy theories – made headlines when she compared Biden's door-to-door outreach program volunteers to "medical brownshirts," a term used to denote Adolf Hitler's paramilitary unit during the Third Reich. Greene has also compared mask mandates to the Nazi-era requirement that Jews people wear Stars of David on their clothing in order to identify themselves.
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