One of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Democratic rivals in the House interrupted her transphobic rant about the Nashville attack during a committee hearing in order to inject his own take on the shooting.
The moment occurred on Wednesday during a hearing of the House Oversight Committee, where the two battled in a mostly empty committee room over blame for the horrifying attack that left three adults and three young children dead at a school.
Police have identified the suspected shooter by their name at birth; Hale reportedly was a transgender man who used he/him pronouns, though law enforcement officials initially described the suspect as a woman in the aftermath of the shooting. Police did not provide another name but on the suspect’s social media accounts they refer to themselves as Aiden.
The fact that the killer identified as transgender fuelled the fires of anti-trans hatred on the conservative right. Despite the vast majority of such mass shootings, particularly school shootings, being carried out by cisgender males, politicians including Ms Greene have used the identity of the Nashville shooter to argue that the issues were linked.
As Ms Greene claimed the Nashville shooter may have been spurred to commit the massacre because they were supposedly “on hormones”, Democratic congressman Jared Moskowitz cut in.
“Reclaiming my time,” he said, silencing Ms Greene who was speaking over his allotted question period.
He then threw blame back at Ms Greene and the GOP: “[Y]ou guys made it easy for people who don’t deserve to have weapons, who are mentally incapable of having weapons of war, being able to buy those weapons and go into schools.”
The moment underscores the contentious and personal rivalries that now define one of the House’s most powerful committees, the panel on Oversight and Government Reform.
The panel has been weaponised by Republicans in recent days to go after Manhattan’s district attorney in response to an indictment that experts and sources close to the investigation say is likely to name former President Donald Trump as the defendant on charges related to a 2016 hush payment of a porn star.
It is currently chaired by GOP Rep James Comer, who has also vowed to use the committee’s authority to pursue investigations into Joe Biden’s family and personal finances.
