Sen. Mitt Romney criticized a Republican congresswoman on Saturday for spreading “nonsense” about the presidential election being stolen from Donald Trump.
In a tweet, the Utah senator responded to a report that Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said she’d recently spoken to Trump and continues to support him.
Romney wrote: “Lies of a feather flock together: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s nonsense and the ‘big lie’ of a stolen election.”
It’s a strong rebuke from Romney, calling out a congressional colleague in his own party — something even the increasingly outspoken senator hasn’t done before. And no other prominent Republican lawmaker appears to have weighed in on Greene’s controversial comments in recent days.
Greene, a freshman representative who was elected three months ago, has made a name for herself as a conservative firebrand who supports far-right views, including several untrue conspiracies and the false claim that Trump won the 2020 election.
Recently, too, several videos and past social media posts of Greene’s have surfaced — first reported by Media Matters — that show the conservative congresswoman supporting those ideologies for years. In one from 2018, she claims a wildfire that tore through California was started by “a laser” from space that’s controlled by a Jewish banking family connected to Democrats. In another, she supported executing Democratic leaders, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Greene has also wrongfully claimed that former President Barack Obama, who is Christian, is a Muslim and falsely suggested there had been “an Islamic invasion of our government” when two Muslim women were elected to the House in 2018. Many of the posts include hate speech, anti-Semitism and even bizarre accusations that the Clinton family has been involved in several murder plots. She has since deleted some of those.
Many Democrats have called for Greene to be expelled from Congress. But Republican leaders have largely remained quiet.
Romney’s comment on Greene, while the first among the GOP, isn’t entirely surprising. The Utah senator has been among the few Republicans in Congress to vocally acknowledge Trump lost the election and support President Joe Biden taking office. He previously called the Republican effort to reject Electoral College votes a threat to democracy (and was heckled for that position on a flight from Salt Lake City to Washington). And he flatly blamed Trump for inciting violence when his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol earlier this month.
Romney said the riot was stirred by “a selfish man’s injured pride and the outrage of supporters who he had deliberately misled for the past two months.”
While Trump was in office, too, Romney was seen as someone who would openly question him when he disagreed.
