Marjorie Taylor Greene Laughs at Question About People Dying from COVID
Others on the right begin turning towards vaccination
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — the Georgia Republican whose brand of conspiracy-driven politics has made her a both a darling of the political right and a nearly constant focus of controversy — laughed at a reporter's question Tuesday asking if she felt a responsibility for helping to protect her constituents from the dangers of COVID-19.
However, even as Greene stoked further contention regarding Republicans and whether they take seriously the peril posed by the novel coronavirus, other conservatives appeared to be taking an about-face to more fully endorse COVID vaccination.
Greene, known for her embrace of such outlandish ideas as QAnon and the conspiracy that California's wildfires began due to Jewish-owned lasers in space, began her encounter with the reporter Tuesday by ducking her question about whether Greene herself had been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus.
Greene has participated in the mushrooming phenomenon among the political right of disseminating misinformation — and outright disinformation — about the anti-COVID vaccines.
Just this week, Twitter suspended Greene's account for 12 hours because the congresswoman used it to disseminate falsehoods regarding the vaccines.
Greene began her encounter with Tia Mitchell, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Washington reporter, by refusing to disclose her personal vaccination status, saying that the question was a violation of her right to medical privacy under federal law.
Mitchell then asked, “Do you feel any responsibility for keeping people in Georgia safe? You know, there are children, skinny people, who have died of the coronavirus. Do you feel any responsibility?”
Greene replied with a chuckle, answering, “Gee, you crack me up. You know what? I think people’s responsibility is their own.”
Greene's defiance related to COVID vaccination stood in contrast to a growing number of her fellow partisans who were beginning to change their tunes and speak out more clearly in favor of vaccination.
The apparent change among some on the right comes after days in which the White House and the rest of the Biden administration have taken a much stronger stance against vaccine misinformation.
For instance, Sean Hannity — the biggest star in the Fox News primetime lineup of right-wing commentary — suddenly delivered a fairly pro-vaccination message on his Monday evening program.
Steve Doocy, a co-host of the Fox News morning program, also this week offered a pro-vaccination take rare on the right-wing network.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), in front of cameras, additionally, advised Americans Tuesday to get vaccinated.
“This is something I think, I’m a good example of, something I know the answer to. It is not at all unclear that the way to avoid getting back in a hospital is to get vaccinated,” McConnell said. “I want to encourage everybody to do that and to ignore all of these other voices that are giving demonstrably bad advice.”
“Running Up Against Reality”
MSNBC host Joy Reid noticed the definite-but-sudden change in on-air tone on Fox News in regards to getting vaccinated.
"Let me ask you about this switch a little bit at Fox News where you have Sean Hannity and Steve Doocy kind of changing their tune. Do you detect that they might be back on their heels a little bit?” Reid asked her guest, “Never Trumper” conservative, Charlie Sykes. “Because you can’t keep lying about everything. You might be able to get away with just lying about the insurrection, but also lying about something that’s killing your own viewers — and they know their viewers are dying — I mean, their elderly, basically, viewers are passing away. Have they reached maybe a tipping point where they have lied about maybe one too many things?"
Reality, Sykes said, is simply getting in the way of the preferred narratives at Fox News, tying in video of Republican congressman Jim Jordan yelling at Capitol Police officers.
“Well, what links these two stories together is they’re running up against reality. And I can’t agree more with Claire’s point about how powerful those videos are. Those videos ought to be played over and over and over again because they make it very, very clear what happened, what the threat was,” Sykes said, referring to the Capitol insurrection on January 6, which many Republicans are also now trying to downplay. “And if Republicans want to defend that, if they want to associate themselves with that, I think that is politically going to be very, very toxic.”
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