Marjorie Taylor Greene was wrong about that bomb at the border: The Georgia Congresswoman had a viral moment in a hearing back in March concerning a “bomb” found at the border. Then, the story fell apart.
Marjorie Taylor Greene: What Did She Do Now?
Now that she’s on Congressional committees again, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) clearly lives for viral moments in committee hearings.
And she got one back in March, at a special field hearing held by the House Homeland Security Committee in McAllen, Texas.
Questioning U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz, the Congresswoman appeared to reveal something shocking: A “bomb,” planted by drug cartels, had been discovered at the border in January. Ortiz answered that he wasn’t able to talk in specifics, because of confidentiality; Greene replied that “I’m not going to be confidential, because I think people deserve to know our border patrol agents should not be in those type of conditions where they are at risk of being blown to pieces by the cartels who, by the way, are criminals and should be treated as such.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene also, in the hearing, called for sending the military to the border, per the Washington Post, based on the bomb story. Rep. Dale W. Strong, in the same hearing, claimed alleged that there was an “improvised explosive device being used against U.S. law enforcement.”
“Not only are the Cartels murdering Americans everyday through drugs and crime, but now they are planting bombs on our land in our country,” Greene wrote in a subsequent tweet. “Our US military needs to take action against the Mexican Cartels. End this Cartel led war against America!” Greene had mentioned “declaring war” against the drug cartels during the hearing.
Greene Had Another Big Oops Moment…
But as it turns out, there was no bomb at the border.
Chief Ortiz said in a tweet at the time, the day after the hearing, that during a January briefing, “leadership was notified that Agents found a duct-taped ball filled with sand that wasn’t deemed a threat to agents/public.” In other parts of the hearing, Ortiz refused to specifically endorse the Republicans’ sharp criticism of the Biden Administration’s approach to border policy. The Democrats on the committee, meanwhile, had mostly skipped the hearing altogether.
Greene, even after that, claimed that “That’s not what the border patrol agents are telling me.”
The Post added that a recap of the hearing released by the Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee did not mention the exchange between Greene and Ortiz about the so-called “bomb.”
MTG Isn’t Exactly Always Truthful
It’s not the first time that Marjorie Taylor Greene has alleged something untrue in a Congressional hearing.
Back at the beginning of March, when questioning a witness before the committee whose two sons had both died of fentanyl overdoses, Greene blamed the Biden Administration’s border policies for those debts.
However, the two men both died of their overdoses in the summer of 2020, when Donald Trump was president.
“Listen to this mother, who lost two children to fentanyl poisoning, tell the truth about both of her son’s murders because of the Biden administrations refusal to secure our border and stop the Cartel’s from murdering Americans everyday by Chinese fentanyl,” Greene had said on Twitter while sharing a video of the exchange from the hearing.
When CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale reached out to Greene’s office, her spokesman replied, “do you think they give a f**k about your bullsh*t fact checking?”
In addition, in a different hearing around the same time, Marjorie Taylor Greene had questioned Georgia Republican election official Gabriel Sterling and shared several long-debunked stories about the 2020 election.
“Trump won Georgia,” she declared, also stating that “thousands of dead voters in Georgia” had helped lead to that result. The Washington Post reported Friday on the existence of a report, commissioned by Trump’s own campaign in 2020 and provided to the campaign in early 2021, the real amount of dead people who cast votes in that state was likely in the double-digits, rather than “thousands.”
Expertise and Experience:
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.
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