Marjorie Taylor Greene Doubles Down on Democrats can control the Weather Comments After Backlash
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has doubled down on her allegation that an unspecified "they" can control the weather, a claim that has sparked a backlash online.
"Yes they can control the weather," the Georgia lawmaker and staunch Donald Trump ally wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday night. "Anyone who says they don't, or makes fun of this, is lying to you. By the way, the people know it and hate all of you who try to cover it up."
The post comes less than a week after Hurricane Helene left a trail of destruction across the Southeastern United States, with the death toll at 227 as of Saturday, according to The Associated Press. Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Milton is brewing in the Gulf of Mexico, and is due to develop into a hurricane and hit Florida midweek.
Greene's comments come after a previous X post on Thursday, in which she originally accused "they" of being able to control the weather.
Her post went viral and had a user-created community note added to it, which clarified that existing "weather control" technology is limited to small scale cloud seeding and was not capable of creating large storms or hurricanes. The post was widely mocked.
In response to Greene's Thursday post, former Republican National Committee chairman and frequent Trump critic Michael Steele wrote, "Yours is a special kind of stupid." Democratic influencer Harry Sisson posted, "You are dumber than a bag of rocks," and another account wrote, "We know you're the dumbest member of Congress. You don't have to remind us of it every day."
Later on Thursday, she posted an image of Helene overlaid on an electoral map, suggesting that the hurricane's path had been intentionally set in motion to target Republican-leaning counties.
Her Saturday post ramped up the allegation and included a 98-second clip of C-SPAN footage from 2016 showing Barack Obama administration CIA Director John Brennan discussing climate engineering. In the clip, Brennan talks about the pros and cons of pumping particles into the atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays and thereby cooling the Earth
Brennan discussed the cost of such a program, were it implemented, and stated that it would not remove any carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and would therefore not solve all environmental problems, including ocean acidification. He also said such a program could stoke geopolitical tensions if the artificially altered climate benefited some regions and damaged others.
Greene did not provide evidence of any existing technologies or programs implemented by the U.S. government, nor any private companies or other governments, that are capable of, or are currently engaging in, climate engineering at a scale sufficient to start a Hurricane.
Newsweek has contacted Greene via email outside of business hours for comment.
The congresswoman has a history of promoting conspiracy theories. In 2021, she was stripped of her committee assignments by the House Democratic majority over her embrace of said theories, racist remarks and her past endorsement of violence against leading Democrats.
In 2018, she suggested that the Rothschilds, a wealthy Jewish banking family frequently referred to in antisemitic conspiracy theories, were involved in a profit-making plot to use space lasers to start wildfires in California.
