Marjorie Taylor Greene Rolls Back 'False Flag' Parkland Rhetoric

GEORGIA — Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is rolling back one of her baseless conspiracy theories amid pressure from fellow Republicans.

But she hedged a bit on the reversal.

In a video interview Monday with right-leaning One America News Network, the provocative freshman legislator rolled back her belief that deadly mass school shootings in Parkland, Florida, and Newtown, Connecticut, were staged and no lives were lost.

“These are not red flag incidences,” Greene said at the 3:09 minute point of the video, which OANN tweeted. “They are not fake and it’s terrible the loss that these families go through and their friends as well. And it should never happen and it doesn’t have to happen if we protect our children properly.”

She couched the statement with her support for arming school staff and her video-recorded confrontation of Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg in opposition to what she sees as “strict gun control,” both of which she claims are spurred by her own personal trauma.

“When I was in 11th grade, one of my schoolmates brought a duffle bag with three guns onto the bus,” Greene told OANN in a story that could not be independently verified.

Her classmate pulled out one of the guns in class, but even when a teacher disarmed him he retrieved another weapon and fired it in a classroom, holding the school hostage for hours, she said.

“I know that fear of being that student at school in a gun-free school zone where there is no good guy with a gun to keep us safe, but there’s only a very upset and disturbed fellow schoolmate that was bringing guns to school to kill people,” Greene said.

She said she encountered Hogg in Washington when she was trying to lobby against the “strict gun control bill” she said he was promoting. That’s when she confronted the teen.

“These type of bills would leave Americans defenseless,” Greene said she told him.

This follows a conversation Greene had on Saturday with Linda Beigel Schulman, mother of Stoneman Douglas High School teacher Scott Schulman who was killed while helping students escape the Parkland shooting incident. Schulman said in an interview with CBS Miami that she wanted Greene to “woman up” and “tell the truth,” and to stop saying that the Parkland shooting, that killed 17, and the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary where 27 died were hoaxes.

“There is nothing to gain by making up stories, especially at the expense of people who lost their loved ones,” Schulman said of Greene. “She has nothing to gain by lying about it. Nothing at all.”

In the OANN interview, Greene also discussed her confrontation with Missouri Democrat, Rep. Cori Bush, whom she called a radical, socialist BLM (Black Lives Matter), Marxist activist and said lied to “get a better office.”

She did not, however, talk about the criticism she has received from members of her own party.

From supporting former President Donald Trump’s false accusations that his election loss was the result of widespread fraud and her views on the school shootings to her belief in unfounded QAnon conspiracy theories and voicing the idea that the forest fires in California were sparked by a space-bound laser, Greene has earned heightened scrutiny from her congressional colleagues at best, and fervent calls for her resignation at the worst.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) on Monday said that Greene’s “loony lies” and conspiracy theories “are cancer for the Republican Party,” according to the Associated Press.

Greene fired back late Monday on Twitter.

Last week, Democrats both in the U.S. House of Representative and at home in the Georgia State Legislature, fashioned resolutions demanding Greene's ouster. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) is scheduled to speak with Greene Tuesday evening regarding her rhetoric.

Wednesday, the House Rules Committee will meet to consider the resolution sponsored by California Democrat Jimmy Gomez that she be stripped of her new House committee appointments.