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- Greene pushed a baseless conspiracy theory about the Texas gunman being into "cross-dressing."
- She also speculated without evidence that the shooter had "mental issues."
- Rep. Paul Gosar pushed a similar theory, calling the shooter a "transsexual leftist illegal alien."
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene pushed a baseless rumor on Sunday about the Texas elementary school massacre, positing without evidence that the gunman was into "cross-dressing."
Greene was speaking during a live Facebook broadcast, where she referenced the school shooting at the Robb Elementary School, during which 21 people, including 19 children, were killed.
"He clearly had a lot of mental issues going on, as was shown with him wearing eyeliner, cross-dressing, a lot of his language, being a loner," Greene said, adding that more information was still coming out about the school shooter.
She also questioned how the shooter got the money to buy the guns he used in the shooting despite coming from a low-income household.
"He must have really been saving up!" Greene said.
In her broadcast, Greene appeared to touch on two separate conspiracy theories swirling around the shooting. Greene seemed to be referencing the baseless rumor pushed by her colleague, Rep. Paul Gosar, that the shooter was a transgender individual.
Last week, Gosar began spreading a baseless, transphobic rumor via a now-deleted tweet that the shooter was a "transsexual leftist illegal alien" hours after the shooting. This is factually wrong on all counts and originated from 4Chan, an unmoderated fringe messaging board. 4Chan users posted images of trans women and falsely claimed they were the shooter, despite these women having nothing to do with what happened in Uvalde.
Greene also casually referenced a baseless conspiracy theory that the Texas massacre was a false flag operation. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and several QAnon influencers posited without any substantiation that the mass shooting was a staged event, with Jones speculating that it was "very suspicious timing, just days before the Houston NRA convention — and wondering how the shooter got "all that money" to purchase his guns.
Jones previously claimed the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which took the lives of 20 children and six adults, was a hoax. After multiple families sued the right-wing radio host, he said in a deposition that "a form of psychosis" made him believe the Sandy Hook shooting wasn't real and admitted that he spread misinformation about it.
As for Greene, she took a pro-gun stance hours after the Uvalde shooting, asserting that the US doesn't need "more gun control" but should "return to God instead." At the time, she also speculated without evidence that "meds can be the problem."
Greene has run on a pro-gun platform. She has been known to hold gun raffles for fundraising campaigns and videotaped harassing a survivor of the 2018 Parkland school shooting in January 2021.
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/ZNCjmhV
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