Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) on Wednesday pressed for House GOP leadership to take urgent action to strip the committee assignments of a QAnon-promoting freshman lawmaker who has endorsed executing Democratic lawmakers and suggested that school shooting massacres were hoaxes.
“The last time I checked, cancers need to be cut out and not allowed to metastasize,” Jeffries said during a press briefing on Wednesday afternoon.
“Kevin McCarthy has the ability to do the right thing — he should,” Jeffries, chairman of the House Democratic caucus, added.
The comments describing a growing “cancer” were targeted at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who has become the face of a mainstreaming of extremism — promoting both violence and falsehoods — that in the wake of the Capitol riot has proven to yield deadly consequences.
"The last time I checked, cancers need to be cut out and not allowed to metastasize."
— Rep. Hakeem Jeffries calling on GOP Leader McCarthy to deal with Marjorie Taylor Greene, who McConnell called a "cancer." pic.twitter.com/iSNRDgGjKg
— The Recount (@therecount) February 3, 2021
Jeffries borrowed the characterization of a conspiracy-laden “cancer” in the GOP from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who issued a blistering rebuke of Republican members who have embraced “looney lies.”
“Loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party and our country,” McConnell said in the Monday statement without mentioning Greene by name.
Greene hit back when she declared in a tweet later on Monday that “the real cancer” for the GOP “is weak Republicans who only know how to lose gracefully.”
Jeffries’ rebuke of Greene — a Trump loyalist who defended the former president after he incited an insurrection at the Capitol last month — strikes a personal tone after he revealed himself last week as the lawmaker in question in a federal criminal complaint related to the Capitol riot. The complaint outlined a series of threatening text messages that had been sent to his brother on the day of the attack minutes before the Capitol was stormed.
The Georgia lawmaker, meanwhile, has shown no remorse and little evidence of backing down after meeting with McCarthy late Tuesday, saying on Wednesday that she would never apologize.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) announced Wednesday afternoon that he plans to push forward with a House vote that will likely strip the Georgia congresswoman of her committee assignments on Thursday.
