Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted a tweet Saturday declaring “today and everyday is 1776” just hours after denying under oath that she knew the term was sometimes used as far-right shorthand for a violent uprising.
The post came the morning after the Georgia Republican extremist was repeatedly asked about the term at a court hearing on whether she can run for re-election under the 14th Amendment, which bars elected representatives from participating in insurrections.
In a Georgia courtroom on Friday, Greene was shown video of an interview he gave to Newsmax the day before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. Greene said he did not recall speaking. with the middle, a tactic he used many times when confronted on the stand with records of his past statements.
“This is our 1776 moment,” he told the Newsmax host in the clip, saying that many of his fellow Republicans shared that specific sentiment.
While 1776 is, of course, a crucially important year in American history, it has also been co-opted by far-right groups like the Proud Boys, the extremist organization behind the “1776.shop” online store. Some of the Trump supporters who attacked Capitol Hill last year were photographed wearing clothing with “1776” prominently displayed, comparing protesting Trump’s election defeat to revolution.
Greene told attorney Andrew Celli, who represents the group of voters suing her, that she didn’t “know much about the Proud Boys.”
Greene had urged his supporters to come on January 6, 2021 to protest Donald Trump’s electoral defeat. But the congresswoman claimed that she had never heard anyone speak of violence in relation to the protest, or that she had ever advocated violence to achieve political ends. From the dais, she said the “1776 moment” referred to the “courage to oppose” Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election.
Saturday’s tweet was posted on Greene’s official Twitter page; Her personal Twitter account was banned from the service last year after she used it to peddle falsehoods about the 2020 election.