Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a conspiracy theorist who once claimed there was no evidence a plane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, made wild comparisons between the terrorist attacks that day and a suspected Chinese spy balloon shot down. earlier this month.
The balloon crossed the country and was lowered when it reached the Atlantic Ocean to prevent injuries on the ground – a line of reasoning that Greene called “pathetic, pathetic” and “a bunch of bullshit” during a local GOP event in Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho, on Friday.
He compared the size of the balloon, which he gave as “three school buses,” to the size of a jetliner … specifically, which crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on September 11, 2001.
“Remember, right? It didn’t kill anyone on the ground. Kill everyone on board. But it didn’t kill anybody on the ground,” Greene said. “So they want to tell everybody that it’s too risky to take down a Chinese spy balloon in rural Idaho or Montana, or some other state, or Alaska? They are liars!”
Greene cooks everything new from conspiracy theories.
“You can only see it two ways,” he said, then presented three ways. “None of us are liars or cowards or our president has been sold to China. You know what? I’m going with all three.”
The clip was posted on Twitter by Patriot Takewho monitors the right-wing media:
Greene, a close ally of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and who spoke at a white nationalist event last year, has for months embraced conspiracy theories about 9/11.
In 2018, he claimed “no evidence has been shown for the plane in the Pentagon.” He’s trying to run again in 2021 saying “9/11 really happened.”
Four planes were hijacked that day. Two were deliberately flown into the World Trade Center in Manhattan and one into the Pentagon. Four crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers realized what was happening and fought the hijackers, preventing them from reaching their intended target, the US Capitol.
About 3,000 people died that day.
Greene’s critics on Twitter are still baffled by the comparison: