An expert of extremism who appeared before the Republican-led House Oversight Committee last week where she battled with Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene took the controversial Georgia lawmaker to task for assertions she made in a way that she couldn’t when providing testimony.
Taking to MSNBC, Cynthia Miller-Idriss, who runs the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University, called out Taylor Greene for stating she has seen no evidence that some supporters of Donald Trump are violent.
According to the extremism expert, the Georgia lawmaker was being ridiculous.
As she noted, when she was asked specifically about Trump followers, she told the committee, “If they’re calling for violence, it doesn’t matter to me who they support,” to which Taylor Greene replied, “I haven’t seen any.”
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“There are two ways to interpret her words. Either she meant she hasn’t seen any violent extremists anywhere, or she meant she had not seen any Trump supporters who had called for violence. Both statements are absurd,” she wrote, before adding Greene is trafficking in exactly they type of disinformation her group has been warning about.
As to Greene’s running cover for Trump’s followers, she wrote, “That statement is so impossibly wrong that it is hard to imagine it needs to be challenged. But when an elected official says something that so clearly contradicts all available evidence, it merits correction. And the facts are absolutely clear.”
“Hundreds of Trump supporters have been arrested for criminal charges related to their violence at the U.S. Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6. Several members of the extremist Oathkeepers and Proud Boys groups have already been convicted of the serious charge of seditious conspiracy for their actions,” she explained before adding, “If Greene meant that she hasn’t seen any violent extremists at all, then she must not be looking at any of the evidence.”