Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has again doubled down on her highly inflammatory call for a “national divorce” between red and blue states, which some have interpreted as advocacy for a second American Civil War.
Speaking to Sean Hannity of Fox News on Tuesday evening, Ms Greene refused to back down and insisted instead that the US was headed for precisely that outcome.
“In my life and my world, all of my friends are regular Americans,” she told Mr Hannity.
“Everyone I talk to is sick and tired and fed up with being bullied by the left, abused by the left, and disrespected by the left.
“Our ideas, our policies and our ways of life have become so far apart that it’s just coming to that point. And the last thing I ever want to see in America is a civil war. No one wants that – at least everyone I know would never want that – but it’s going that direction and we have to do something about it.”
The row began when the Georgia legislator tweeted on Monday: “We need a national divorce. We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s [sic] traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”
The statement succeeded only in bringing Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans together, with the likes of Jon Stewart and Liz Cheney united in condemnation.
“We get to keep the name right?” the former Daily Show anchor joked.
On Tuesday, Ms Greene took her anti-democratic stance further when she told Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk on his Real America’s Voice show that Democrats who relocate to Republican-controlled red states should not be allowed to vote in elections for five years.
“Red states can choose in how they allow people to vote in their states,” she told Mr Kirk.
“What I think would be something that some red states could propose is: well, okay, if Democrat voters choose to flee these blue states where they cannot tolerate the living conditions, they don’t want their children taught these horrible things, and they really change their mind on the types of policies that they support, well once they move to a red state, guess what, maybe you don’t get to vote for five years.
“You can live there, and you can work there, but you don’t get to bring your values that you basically created in the blue states you came from by voting for Democrat leaders and Democrat policies.”
White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson reacted in a statement: “Congresswoman Greene’s comments are sick, divisive, and alarming to hear from a member of the House Oversight and Homeland Security Committees.
“Congressional Republicans have an obligation to say clearly whether they agree with Congresswoman Ms Greene’s calls to dissolve the union or condemn her vile push to further divide our nation.”
She added that Joe Biden “ran for office to restore the soul of the nation, not to let Republicans in Congress rip our country apart at the seams”.
When Ms Greene discussed the matter with Mr Hannity on Tuesday, she expressed confidence that her point of view was a future vote-winner, based on the response she had received on social media.
“I actually think this is a much bigger movement than most people in Washington even realised,” she insisted.
“You can take a look at the tweets that I made just yesterday. The amount of likes and retweets that those tweets got should tell people a lot. And they are not aware of it yet because they don’t talk to regular people.”
