Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said Tuesday that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) should be removed from the House Republican conference over remarks comparing coronavirus-related restrictions to anti-Jewish laws in Nazi Germany.
“You can’t stop somebody from calling themselves a Republican or declaring themselves a Republican,” Kinzinger said, according to The Hill.
“But what we can do as a party is take a stand and say, ‘You don’t belong in our conference.’ That’s what I think we should do.
“I think we should kick her out of the conference, prevent her from coming to conference meetings, benefiting from conference materials, and I’m not sure if that’ll happen, but it’s just going to continue this kind of stuff,” he added. “It’s just mind-numbing.”
Greene drew outrage last week after criticizing House rules requiring that members wear masks in the chamber except when speaking during debate.
“You know, we can look back at a time in history when people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany,” Greene told Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody. “And this is exactly the type of abuse that [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi is talking about.”
Earlier Tuesday, Greene tweeted out an article about a Tennessee grocery store adding a “vaccination logo” to employees’ name badges.
“Vaccinated employees get a vaccination logo just like the Nazi’s [sic] forced Jewish people to wear a gold star,” she wrote. Vaccine passports & mask mandates create discrimination against unvaxxed people who trust their immune systems to a virus that is 99 percent survivable.”
Greene’s comments were condemned by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) as well as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
In February, the House voted to strip Greene of her committee assignments over her association with various conspiracy theories — including QAnon and the “9/11 truther” movement — as well as her past assertions that school shootings may have been “false flag” operations staged by gun control advocates.
House GOP rules require a two-thirds vote to expel a member from the conference, meaning it would take 142 votes to remove Greene.