Marjorie Taylor-Greene disavows QAnon, fights with Dr. Dre – Following the victory by her preferred candidate, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), for House Speaker, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA) had an eventful couple of days.
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First, the Congresswoman, long associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory, made clear in an interview that she no longer believes in it.
“Like a lot of people today, I had easily gotten sucked into some things I had seen on the internet,” Greene said in a Fox News interview.
“But that was dealt with quickly early on. I never campaigned on those things. That was not something I believed in. That’s not what I ran for Congress on. So those are so far in the past.”
Taylor Greene, prior to her election to Congress in 2020, had been something of a prominent influencer in the world of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which posits that a cabal of pedophiles in politics and Hollywood is exercising secret control over society. Still, that then-President Trump had a secret plan to defeat, jail, and/or execute them.
“Recently, there has been a lot of chatter in small circles among those who search for the truth,” Greene wrote on a blog in 2018, per Rolling Stone. “There has been an anonymous voice, with obvious intelligence beyond the normal person telling of things to come. They call themselves Q. Make no mistake, Q is a patriot.” Her infamous post about “space lasers” also came prior to her time in Congress.
Even if she’s not literally using QAnon rhetoric anymore, Greene has been no stranger to conspiratorial thinking more recently.
Marjorie Taylor-Greene was in the news for another reason Monday: What appears to be a new feud with the famed rapper Dr. Dre.
On Monday morning, Greene tweeted a video of herself walking around to the tune of the Dr. Dre song “Still D.R.E.” Not long after, the video was replaced with the notation “this media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner.”
It turned out, per Buzzfeed News, that Dre’s representations had filed a cease and desist letter.
“I don’t license my music to politicians, especially someone as divisive and hateful as this one,” the rapper, whose real name is Andre Young, said in the letter. “Wrongfully exploiting this work through the various social media outlets to promote your divisive and hateful political agenda.”
The letter went on to state that Greene did not have permission to use his music the way she had.
“Mr. Young has not, and will never, grant you permission to broadcast or disseminate any of his music,” the letter continued, per Buzzfeed. “One might expect that, as a member of Congress, you would have a passing familiarity with the laws of our country. It’s possible, though, that laws governing intellectual property are a little too arcane and insufficiently populist for you to really have spent much time on.”
Marjorie Taylor-Greene responded with a statement of her own.
“While I appreciate the creative chord progression, I would never play your words of violence against women and police officers and your glorification of the thug life and drugs,” Greene said. Although she had, of course, used Dre’s music in the video earlier in the day.
It’s far from a rare occurrence for musicians to object to political candidates using their music at rallies or other public events, sometimes with an actual cease-and-desist letter and other times verbally. Nickelback, Queen, and the estates of Prince and Tom Petty are among the many entities that have objected to Donald Trump playing their music at his events.
Of course, with Twitter, the company can simply remove the music instantly in response to a copyright claim, in a way that can’t quite happen at a live rally.
Bringing the two stories together, Trump did play what was described as a “QAnon Song” at a rally back in September.
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
