Republican lawmaker and conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene has again lashed out at New York City, claiming to have encountered “marijuana zombies” on her recent visit to the Big Apple.
The Georgia congresswoman was seen in Manhattan on 4 April when she attempted to address a rally staged by the New York Young Republicans Club in support of Donald Trump during his arraignment over alleged hush money payments, only to be drowned out by counter-demonstrators with whistles and drums.
Clearly unhappy at the hostile reception she received from this “emergency noise demo” – which rendered her diatribe in defence of the disgraced former president incomprehensible, even with the aid of a megaphone – Ms Greene took to Fox News that evening for an interview with Tucker Carlson.
When the host asked her whether she had found the city to be “neat and tidy”, she scoffed and said she thought New York was “disgusting”, invoking its portrayal as the crime-ridden Gotham City of the Batman comics and attacking mayor Eric Adams, who had specifically warned her against indulging in “hate speech”.
“The streets are filthy, they are covered with people, basically dying on drugs, they can’t even stand up – they’re falling over,” she told Carlson.
“There’s so much crime in the city, I cannot comprehend how people live there. It was repulsive, it smells bad – I think it’s a terrible place.”
Evidently still not over the experience two weeks later, the politician has now retweeted a New York Post article entitled: “Let’s be blunt – legal weed is turning New York workers into zombies.”
She commented: “100%. I saw them when I went there to protest against the weaponization of government against President Trump by a George Soros funded DA.”
Mr Soros, a Hungarian-born billionaire philanthropist, donated money to a group that endorses liberal prosecutors, some of which was spent on helping elect Alvin Bragg as Manhattan DA. The Jewish financier’s name is frequently bandied about by the far-right when making insinuations about globalism that pander to antisemitic sentiment.
The piece in question, a Post editorial by Steve Cuozzo, alleges that New York City is now so in thrall to marijuana that “stinky smoke hangs everywhere, seeping into subway cars and even Broadway theaters”, with the writer claiming he now routinely has to repeat his Starbucks order multiples times to baristas too “bummed-out” to comprehend his words.
Cuozzo concludes his polemic by arguing that it is time to lower the minimum wage as punishment for service staff “stoned up the wazoo, hollow-eyed, disengaged from their tasks, their breath reeking of weed”.
“I haven’t seen so much pot-induced lethargy since my Vietnam-era college days, when so many fellow students were high that their panicked weed-flushing during a rumoured police raid overwhelmed the campus pipes.”
How much of this supposed hellscape-on-the-Hudson Ms Greene could possibly have seen on 4 April, even if true, is open to question, given the speed with which she fled the Trump rally amid a hail of taunts and jeers from a crowd too energetic and impassioned to match the bong zombie archetype described by Cuozzo.
Also outside the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse that day was New York Democrat Jamaal Bowman, who told his fellow representative: “Go back to your district. What are you doing here? You’re here for politics, you’re here because you want to be VP... You’re here for your own nonsense.”
Preferring the comparative safety of a moving car, the Maga congresswoman instead gave an interview to the sympathetic Right Side Broadcasting Network in which she compared Mr Trump to Nelson Mandela and Jesus Christ.
She has since busied herself by defending Pentagon leak suspect Jack Teixeira and engaging in a meme war with fellow Republican Lindsey Graham.
