House

Greene in 2020 video said she wouldn’t take down statue of Hitler

by Mychael Schnell - 05/25/21 12:53 PM ET

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said in a 2020 video that she would not take down a statue of Adolf Hitler or “Satan himself” because of their historical significance.

The comment comes amid a flurry of backlash after Greene has repeatedly compared mask policies to the Holocaust.

In a newly discovered video of the then-candidate in 2020, Greene argues that she would disagree with removing a statue of Hitler, despite the Nazi leader and others representing “something I would fully disagree with.”

“We’re seeing situations where Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, all kinds of statues are being attacked, and it seems to be just an effort to take down history. And whether I see a statue that may be something that I would fully disagree with like Adolf Hitler, maybe a statue of Satan himself, I would not want to say take it down,” Greene said in the video first reported by Punchbowl News.

She said she would want the statues to remain intact “so that I could tell my children and teach others about who these people are, what they did and what they may be about.”

tipster sent me this video.@mtgreenee said she would not support taking down a statue of Hitler or Satan even though she “fully disagrees” with them.

her reaason: “so that i can tell my children and teach others about who they are and what they did”https://t.co/anZmqqV9Lj

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) May 25, 2021

Greene has received widespread criticism this week, after comparing the mask policy on the House floor to the Holocaust.

“This woman is mentally ill,” Greene said on Real America’s Voice. “You know, we can look back at a time in history when people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany. And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.”

On Tuesday, the top three House Republican leaders condemned the congresswoman for repeatedly equating COVID-19 vaccination and mask-wearing rules to the Holocaust.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy in a statement said “Marjorie is wrong,” and called her “intentional decision” to liken wearing masks to the Holocaust “appalling.”

“Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling. The Holocaust is the greatest atrocity committed in history. The fact that this needs to be stated today is deeply troubling,” McCarthy said.

“Let me be clear: the House Republican Conference condemns this language,” he added.

A spokeswoman for Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) both sounded similar notes.

Greene has since defended her comment, contending that she only compared mask mandates to “discrimination against Jews in early Nazi years” and not the Holocaust.

Greene’s newly discovered remarks were made at a Dalton City, Ga., city council meeting in June 2020, around one month after the police killing of George Floyd sparked a flood of nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice.

Those protests gave rise to a nationwide debate regarding confederate statues still standing in the U.S., with a number of individuals calling for the monuments to be removed.

Statues were ultimately toppled, vandalized or slated for removal by government officials in several states, including Virginia, Alabama, Texas, South Carolina, Mississippi, Michigan, New York, Florida and Kentucky.

While Democrats nationwide have widely called for the removal of the statues throughout the country, a number of Republicans have argued that the symbols are part of history, and should remain intact.

The debate over confederate statues made it all the way to Capitol Hill, where there were, at the time, 11 statues of Confederal figures displayed in various quarters of the complex.

The House last July approved legislation to remove statues in the Capitol building of people who served in the Confederacy or otherwise worked to defend slavery.

The bill passed in a 305 to 113 vote, with all of the “no” votes coming from GOP lawmakers. Seventy-two Republicans did, however, support the legislation.

GOP Sen. Roy Blunt (Mo.) blocked the Senate from passing a similar bill in June 2020, which would have removed Confederate statues from the Capitol.

Blunt at the time noted that Congress had an agreement with states, and said he wanted time to consider giving the issue a hearing in the Rules Committee, which he chairs.

A statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was ultimately removed from the Capitol in December. It was previously a part of Virginia’s contribution to the National Statuary Hall Collection at the Capitol, where it stood for more than 100 years.

Additionally, a number of other states started the process of removing Confederate statues from the Capitol building in August.

The Hill has reached out to Greene for comment.

Updated 2:01 p.m.