A week after Hurricane Helene left a path of destruction from north Florida through Georgia and South Carolina into western North Carolina, hundreds of thousands across the Southeast are still without power and cell service. In North Carolina alone, at least dozens, if not hundreds, are still missing, and critical road infrastructure across the region needs repair. As of Saturday, the second costliest U.S. hurricane behind Katrina has left 227 people dead.
So what is second-term Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Northwest Georgia, doing to help those suffering from the hurricane? Helping expedite federal and state dollars to those whose homes were washed away in a torrent of flooding? Advocating for more funding to FEMA to better help respond to these disasters that are becoming more and more frequent?
No, doing that would be sound, reasonable and representative of the people in her district — things that are not Greene’s forte. Instead, Greene is doing what she does best: lying and attracting the worst kind of attention for Georgia’s 14th Congressional district.
Over the past week, Rep. Greene, in posts on X — the social media site, formerly known as Twitter, that Elon Musk, the Donald Trump supporting billionaire, has turned into a hotbed of misinformation and outright lies — espoused a far-right conspiracy that the government used lasers to steer the storm over Republican-majority counties.
These baseless claims are nothing new for Greene. Anyone who has had the misfortune of following the representative since she first entered Congress in 2021 knows she has an affinity for conspiracy theories, especially when it comes to natural disasters.