Marjorie Taylor Greene’s latest eyebrow raising campaign video features the Georgia congresswoman discussing the threat of invasive hogs in Texas while also seeming to compare the feral animals attacking farmers’ fields to Democrats.
The 45-second clip, shared on the Republican lawmaker’s Facebook page on Tuesday, begins by showing Ms Greene walking through an ominously lit blue farmer’s field shouldering a rifle as her eyes slowly begin to turn white and lightning strikes in the background.
“We’ve got skyrocketing inflation, high diesel fuel and Democrats’ America Last policies,” says the Georgia lawmaker while standing in front of a helicopter.
The video, part of her re-election campaign for a second term she is widely predicted to win, continues by showing her aiming her rifle at an ambling hog located hundreds of feet below as she rides through the air in a chopper.
“Democrats aren’t the only ones destroying farmers’ ability to put food on the table – we’ve got wild hogs destroying farmers’ fields,” she continued. “So we decided to go hog hunting.”
The next sequence of frames shows Ms Greene seeming to snipe out a wild hog, which she then crouches next to while beaming back at the camera and saying: “Let’s help American farmers out. Sign up below and let’s go in that helicopter and go hog hunting. Enter to win now.”
According to the rules, contestants will have from 23 September until 20 November to enter their name into the draw, which will be held on 20 December.
Fifty of the entrants will be drawn at random, with the finalist – who will get to choose one guest to join them on the hog hunting trip, reportedly valued at $10,000 – being selected from that group by the “sponsor”. That individual is not specified but is listed in the rules as “Marjorie Taylor Greene’s People Over Politicians Committee”.
Ms Greene’s contest does not disclose where in Texas the hunt will take place, but according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife the population of feral hogs across the state is estimated to be at 1.5m with the highest concentration being found in East, South and Central Texas.
Commentators online were quick to criticise the Georgia lawmaker’s latest attempt to garner attention for her re-election campaign, with some making jibes about a previous Republican politician’s failed hunting trip.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene is having a contest where the winner gets to join her for a day of hunting wild hogs. Let’s hope Dick Cheney wins,” wrote one user, referring to the incident where the former vice-president shot and wounded a Texas attorney while participating in a quail hunt.
“Who else is rooting for the hogs?” quipped another user, while another compared the Georgia congresswoman to a “pig” by saying: “personally I’m against pig-on-hog violence.”
For her part, the firebrand politician from the Peach State did not take kindly to the criticism she received within hours of posting about the contest.
“@HuffPost I demand you change this headline and your lies about me immediately,” Ms Greene tweeted on Wednesday morning while resharing an article from the news outlet titled: “Marjorie Taylor Greene Likens Dems To Hogs, Wants Help Shooting Them Dead”.
“Your freedom of press is not freedom to lie about me. I NEVER said anything like this and did NOT call for violence on Democrats,” she added before derailing into a Twitter thread that claimed at one point that there were no Republicans who had ever “aligned with Nazism”.
“There is not one single Republican that has ever aligned with Nazism, fascism, Marxism, socialism, communism, or any other awful political ideology. But I can’t say the same about Democrats, Hollywood elites, or the media,” she tweeted. “Your projection is becoming exposed.”
That Twitter thread in defence of her hog hunting then kicked off its own online comment thread, particularly after attorney and Twitter sleuth Ron Filipkowski shared it on his personal account.
“Sept 24th 2022 in Texas: Trumpers, Proud Boys, Patriot Front and Literal Nazis protesting together,” replied one Twitter user to Mr Filipkowski’s screenshot of Ms Greene’s tweet, with pictures of men adorned in militia gear and holding signs that included lines like: “LGBT is Talmud” and “Jews***”.
The Anti-Defamation League has defined the Trump-aligned Patriot Front group as a “white supremacist group whose members maintain that their ancestors conquered America and bequeathed it to them, and no one else”.
The Proud Boys – who Donald Trump famously told to “stand back and stand by” after refusing to condemn their activities – has been described by the ADL as a right-wing extremist group whose members “are primarily misogynistic, Islamophobic, transphobic and anti-immigration” with some members who promote white supremacist and antisemitic ideologies.
Other users shared pictures from Trump rallies where supporters of the former Republican president had adorned themselves with MAGA hats with swastika arm bands.
The Independent reached out to Ms Greene’s spokesperson for comment on the hog hunting contest and the remarks she made about the HuffPost article but did not hear back immediately.
