Born in the USA: 'Stolen election' and other wild lies roiling American politics

Conspiracy theories more mainstream in US now thanks to Trump's rhetoric, social media

- Bhagyashree Garekar

Just as the United States House of Representatives was voting on a funding Bill to avert a government shutdown at midnight on March 22, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene filed a motion to oust Speaker Mike Johnson.

She said she was upset about more money being allocated for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Bill, without providing for more stringent border security measures, among other things.

A year ago, the diminutive, 49-year-old Donald Trump loyalist, known by her initials MTG, tweeted a call for a "national divorce" between Republican and Democrat states.

The Republican congresswoman complained that the blue Democratic states had a "sick and disgusting woke culture" and "traitorous America Last" policies.

But that is just the more friendly face of MTG.

In 2021, a few months after she made her debut in Congress, Ms Greene's abrasive and conspiracy-embracing politics led to her removal from the House budget and education committees.

Just before the vote to eject her, she said she had stopped believing in QAnon, referring to an unsubstantiated claim that a high-ranking official in the Trump administration known as Q would release cryptic clues about a behind-the-scenes battle between Trump and a cabal of child-sacrificing devil worshippers embedded in the government.

She also distanced herself from other outlandish beliefs that she had voiced, such as questioning whether a plane crashed into the Pentagon on Sept 11, 2001, and that California wildfires were caused by lasers connected to the Rothschilds, a Jewish banking family that is often the subject of anti-Semitic tropes.

But her fellow lawmakers were unconvinced.

More than 1,000km away from the national capital in suburban Rome, a small town in Georgia, Ms Ellen Towson was more sympathetic.

"We have not seen anyone quite like her. She makes us feel heard," said the housewife.