Marjorie Taylor Greene caught on camera telling crowd to scare off vaccination promoters with guns

Far-right congresswoman warns that government agents will be knocking on people’s doors to ask for their addresses

Andrew Naughtie
Friday 06 August 2021 16:45 BST
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Marjorie Taylor Greene tells an audience what to do if someone advises them to get vaccinated
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Footage has emerged showing far-right Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene telling a sympathetic crowd of Alabamans that they should use guns to scare off government volunteers trying to encourage vaccination.

“You lucky people here in Alabama might get a knock on your door because I hear Alabama might be one of the most unvaccinated states in the nation,” she said to applause.

“Well, Joe Biden wants to come talk to you guys. 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.”

The government already has most of this information, and there will be no need for the door-knockers to ask for the addresses of houses whose doors they have just knocked on.

“Yeah, well,” the congresswoman continued, “what they don’t know is in the South, we all love our second amendment rights, and we’re not real big on strangers showing up at our front door, are we? They might not like the welcome they get.”

Conspiracy theories about the Biden administration’s door-knocking initiative have circulated since it was first announced. Some of these false claims have been promulgated by other right-wing members of Congress; North Carolina’s Madison Cawthorn, a hardcore supporter of Donald Trump, suggested that the initiative could be the prelude to a mass confiscation of guns and bibles.

As Ms Greene herself celebrated, Alabama has one of the lowest Covid-19 vaccination rates of any state. Only around 35 per cent of the population has been fully inoculated against the disease, as opposed to more than 50 per cent of the US population at large.

The state is now seeing a surge in both positive test results and hospitalisations, with some hospitals already suffering from high admissions numbers and staffing shortages. The number of admissions looks set to surpass the record set last winter in the coming days and weeks.

Along with her comments on frightening vaccine promoters with guns, Ms Greene also restated the false conspiracy theory that Dr Anthony Fauci “funded Covid-19” by funnelling money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for “gain-of-function research”. Again, the crowd applauded her.

“That is his baby,” she said. “That is his experiment. And he’s getting to watch it in the real world like a live television show where he has the front row seat.” Ms Greene emphasises that the virus really is killing people before the leaked video ends, leaving it a mystery as to what she thinks should be done to end the pandemic besides vaccinating people.

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