Marjorie Taylor Greene: ‘White Supremacy Should Not Be the Main Target … We Should Not Be Pursuing People Based on How They Vote’

As the nation continued to discover and discuss “replacement theory” in late May 2022, a Twitter screenshot on Imgur attributed a quote to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), addressing white supremacy by saying that the government “should not be persuing people based on how they vote”:

That post featured a tweet by Brian Tyler Cohen, also published on May 23 2022. It read:

NEW: Marjorie Taylor Greene just attacked Democrats for trying to prevent white supremacist domestic terrorism: “White supremacy should not be the main target… We should not be persuing people based on how they vote.”

Neither version of the post provided any context or any other information about the purported commentary by Greene. No source was referenced or linked, and comments on both posts made no reference to one.

A typographical error (“persuing”) appeared in the tweet. A search for “We should not be pursuing people based on how they vote” in quotes returned just three results, consisting of two links to Twitter or aggregators and one to a recent post on Reddit’s r/PoliticalHumor — also referencing Cohen’s tweet:

More than 600 comments appeared on the Reddit thread, but we were unable to find any clues about source material in them. A shortened search, without quotes, led to a possible clue via Newsweek.com.

A May 22 2022 article on that site, “Greene Complains About Focus on White Supremacists After Buffalo Shooting,” began:

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia recently complained about the focus on white supremacists and suggested that America should focus on other issues.

“Jerrold Nadler was on the House floor and he was talking about white supremacy,” she said during an appearance on Real America’s Voice, Raw Story reported on [May 22 2022].

Greene was referring to Democratic New York Representative Jerrold Nadler’s remarks on the House floor on May 18 [2022] where he called for a stricter response to hate crimes.

Newsweek.com quoted Greene’s comments about previous mass shootings and embedded a Twitter clip of Greene’s remarks:

Around 45 seconds in to the clip (which was 71 seconds long), Greene said:

“… so it’s not about race, it shouldn’t be about race, but [other shooters] are clearly racist as well.

“So White supremacy shouldn’t be the main target, we should be more concerned about the illegal invasion at the border, the crime happening every single day on our streets. Especially in cities like Chicago … we should go after criminals that break the law and not — not pursue people based on their skin color and how they vote — but that’s what, that’s what the Democrats want to do.”

A popular tweet from Brian Tyler Cohen claimed that Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said “White supremacy should not be the main target … We should not be pursuing people based on how they vote,” but not when or where Greene made the remarks. A May 22 2022 tweet included video footage of Greene’s remarks, transcribed above. Cohen’s tweet elided parts of Greene’s statement (perhaps to condense it into a single tweet), but Greene did say that “white supremacy should not be the main target,” and that “we should … not pursue people based on their skin color and how they vote.”