Videos posted on Twitter by Greene and the Gen Z activist group Voters of Tomorrow show Greene walking out of a news conference while being questioned by activists about gun violence. As Green approaches a crosswalk, she is seen kicking one of the activists who was walking in front of her. These stupid cowards want the government to take away guns and the rights of parents to defend their children in schools. You have to be an idiot to think that gun control will create a utopian society where criminals are disarmed and obey the law. Gun-free zones kill people. pic.twitter.com/1T37HH8jEO — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) September 15, 2022 “Excuse me,” Green says while at first appearing to step on protester Marianna Pecora’s foot. “Excuse me,” Green says again, this time after appearing to deliberately pull her leg back and aim for Pecora’s leg. “Oh my God,” Pecora, 18, is seen saying in the videos. The Justice Department’s Jan. 6 investigation looks at … everything “You can’t shut out members of Congress,” Green’s communications director, Nick Dyer, told Pecora, even as Green engaged her in conversation. In a statement to the Washington Post, Dyer took issue with the video’s description and described a version of events not supported by video evidence. The collision began around 5 p.m. east when the conservative House Freedom Caucus, of which Green is a member, held a press conference to discuss a government funding bill being debated in the Senate. As lawmakers were leaving the event, Santiago Mayer, the 20-year-old founder of Voters of Tomorrow, approached Greene and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), another member of the caucus, asking to take a photo and claiming that be a “huge fan,” remarked a Washington Post reporter at the event. But both members quickly recognized Mayer as an activist. Bobert pushed the Mayor’s smartphone away and hurried out. Green instead traveled with the group of activists – and accused Mayer of child abuse. Mayer told the Washington Post that the accusation came after he asked her if she had a plan to protect children from school shootings. “You’re helping kids get shot at school,” Meyer told Green. The lawmaker, who has criticized gun control regulations for banning firearms in some public places, responded by saying he should just “move to another country.” “I asked her if her official position as a member of Congress was that I should just move to another country if I didn’t want children to be shot,” Mayer said. DeSantis gave top GOP donors a taste of his plans for migrant flights to Martha’s Vineyard in culture war speech He said Green declined to answer that question. That’s when Pecora intervened, and the videos appear to show the incident taking a physical turn. The congresswoman, Mayer said, also called the group of activists “cowards.” Mayer, who is a Mexican immigrant, said he doesn’t know if his slight accent was down to Greene, leading to her suggestion that he move to another country. After the incident, however, Greene took aim at Mayer and his nationality on Twitter, calling him a “paid political activist who happens to be blessed to immigrate to our great country.” “He should respect and be grateful for American freedoms, like our 2A, instead of trying to destroy them,” he said. “If he doesn’t like it, he can come back.” Mayer is a grassroots organizer who founded Voters of Tomorrow at age 17 to encourage his American peers to vote and become more civically engaged. He said he, Pecora and other members of the Gen Z-run team were on Capitol Hill Thursday to “talk to members of Congress about what Gen Z’s priorities are.” They had just left a meeting with the House Rules Committee when they ran into the Freedom Caucus. Pecora, a college freshman, told The Post that the argument with Greene was unlike any other interaction she’s had with lawmakers, with whom she spent the week meeting to discuss Gen Z priorities. Those lawmakers, she said, they took her group of young activists seriously and treated them with respect. “It’s honestly, really disappointing to think that a bunch of kids can hold their own better than a sitting member of Congress,” Pecora said. “We’ve been sitting in meetings all week with both Democrats and Republicans. No one has anything but respect. Everyone was so incredibly attentive and took us seriously and had, like, very productive conversations with us. Except for Marjorie Taylor Greene.’ Mayer said he and Pecora have not yet discussed whether to press charges against Greene. Pecora, he said, was physically OK after the kick, if slightly shaken. “It’s kind of a mess,” Mayer said. “She’s … shocked that a member of Congress would try to kick her.” Green has a history of intense controversy around Capitol Hill. In 2019, before he was elected to Congress, he harassed David Hogg, a then-teenage gun control activist and survivor of the Parkland, Florida shooting, at school while he walked across the grounds to meet with lawmakers. Green followed Hogg for several blocks as he repeated lies about the events at his high school, where 17 people were killed in the 2018 attack. As Hogg crossed a street, Green turned to another person filming the encounter and called Hogg ” coward”. In 2021, Green spoke to Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) in a Capitol hallway and accused her of supporting “terrorists.” Two Post reporters watched the interaction, which led Ocasio-Cortez to call on congressional leadership to reconsider its security posture to protect elected officials. “You don’t care about the American people,” Green yelled. “Why do you support terrorists and antifa?” Ocasio-Cortez didn’t stop to answer Greene, only turning once and throwing her hands in the air in an exasperated gesture. House Democrats chastised Greene for her behavior and voted in 2021 to remove her from her committee duties. Greene previously said black people “are slaves to the Democratic Party” and claimed that Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — the first two Muslim women elected to Congress — represented “a Islamic invasion of our government offices.” He has also repeatedly compared liberal lawmakers to Nazis, and continued to do so even after warnings from Republican leaders to stop. Marianna Sotomayor contributed to this report.
