A sitting senator on Thursday expressed her gratitude for an endorsement from … a first-time congressional candidate who’s promoted the insane QAnon conspiracy theory?
Yep, things were a bit off-kilter when Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), the first-term, appointed senator from Georgia, drove up to a campaign event in a Humvee with Marjorie Taylor Greene, who’s voiced her support in the past of the theory that asserts a satantic cabal of pedophiles secretly controls the world.
.@SenatorLoeffler and Marjorie Taylor Greene roll up for the endorsement announcement. #gapol pic.twitter.com/w3IyPKw7qX
— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) October 15, 2020
“No one in Georgia cares about this QAnon business,” Loeffler said of Greene’s conspiracy mongering Thursday, as quoted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“What we agree on is that we are fighting socialism, that we are promoting conservative values,” the senator added. “And I’m not going to stand for an attack on her character, because she has stood for American values.”
?? NEW ENDORSEMENT ??@mtgreenee has officially endorsed our campaign! I’m so proud to have this strong, conservative fighter on Team Kelly! #gasen #gapol pic.twitter.com/N0qC2x5Yhj
— Kelly Loeffler (@KLoeffler) October 15, 2020
Greene’s QAnon affiliation is not just an issue for Democrats. Over the weekend, Greene got in a Twitter spat with Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA), who recently introduced a widely-supported congressional resolution condemning QAnon. Riggleman has called the QAnon “the mental gonorrhea of conspiracy theories.”
Greene has tried to distance herself from the theory in recent months, saying in an August Fox News interview that “yeah, there was a time there for a while that I had read about Q, posted about it, talked about it, which is some of these videos you’ve seen come out. But once I started finding misinformation, I decided that I would choose another path.”
The Journal-Constitution noted that Greene applauded Loeffler’s criticisms of Black Lives Matter at the endorsement event, saying, “If Black Lives Matter to this organization, they would care about all the black babies that die every single day through abortion, they would care about the black lives that are taken on black on black crime.”
Loeffler has been a vocal opponent of Black Lives Matter, calling the formal organization promoting the social movement “divisive” and anti-Semitic.
As Politico noted over the summer, Greene’s fringe beliefs aren’t limited to QAnon. She has said that members of Congress shouldn’t be allowed to take the oath of office on a Koran, and that the diverse class of congressional freshman elected in 2018 represented “an Islamic invasion of our government.”
In a September Facebook post, Greene published a photo of herself holding a rifle next to pictures of Reps. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). “SQUAD’S WORST NIGHTMARE,” read a caption on the image.
Loeffler could use a bump in her race, which is a special election to serve the final two years of the former Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term.
Isakson resigned late last year due to health reasons, and the special election to finish his term will take place in November. If no candidate receives a majority of support, the top two vote-getters will compete in a January runoff.
