White House Slams Marjorie Taylor Greene For Saying She'd Have 'Won' Jan. 6 Riot

The White House on Monday condemned Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) for her recent boast that if she’d been in charge of organizing last year’s violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, people would have shown up armed and “won.” 

Greene’s remarks, deputy White House press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement, are a “slap in the face” to the law enforcement officers who risked their lives to keep members of Congress safe during the attack.

“It goes against our fundamental values as a country for a Member of Congress to wish that the carnage of January 6th had been even worse, and to boast that she would have succeeded in an armed insurrection against the United States government,” Bates said. 

He continued: “All leaders have a responsibility to condemn these dangerous, abhorrent remarks and stand up for our Constitution and the rule of law.”

Greene made the inflammatory comments Saturday at an annual gala hosted by the New York Young Republican Club in Manhattan, where she cracked jokes about media reports saying she was involved in planning the violent attack, where more than 100 people were injured. 

“I want to tell you something. If Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, we would’ve been armed,” Greene told the crowd.

Rioters did show up armed   with stun guns, pepper spray, baseball bats and other tools wielded as weapons.  

After the White House condemned her comments, Greene on Monday issued a lengthy statement defending herself. 

“The White House needs to learn how sarcasm works. My comments were making fun of Joe Biden and the Democrats , who have continuously made me a political target since January 6th,” she said.

Her statement also included several references to the Second Amendment and firearms. 

“The only time Democrats ‘support’ the 2A is when armed Antifa larpers want to defend perverts at drag queen story time or when leftist Hollywood celebs and politicians are protected by armed bodyguards,” she said.

Greene, along with a handful of other far-right Republicans , has demanded sympathy for jailed Jan. 6 rioters and alleged they’re being held in exceptionally terrible conditions.

“I’ve never seen human suffering like I witnessed last night,” she tweeted after visiting rioters at a D.C. correctional facility. “While some were shown to us in seemingly beneficial programs, others were in tortuous lockdown. I’ll never forget hearing their screams.”

She told HuffPost last month that she’d asked Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), a member of the House Republican leadership team, if he would “support investigations into the treatment of pretrial January 6 defendants,” and said that he supported the idea. 

Greene is expected to become a powerful GOP figure next year in the GOP-led House. Her party’s leaders have vowed to restore her committee assignments, which Democrats stripped last year because of her hateful and conspiratorial statements, including ones casting doubt on school shootings  and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks .