Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nancy Mace are bringing out the rhetorical big guns to knock down Representative-elect Sarah McBride.
Over the course of the week, Greene has accused McBride—the first openly transgender person to be elected to Congress—of being mentally ill and partaking in a “war on women.” Now Greene is claiming that a trans woman’s mere presence in a bathroom is tantamount to assault.
“I’m not kidding you,” Greene said Tuesday on Steve Bannon’s War Room. “It is like a physical assault for a man to come in, charging into our private places, bathrooms, locker rooms, our gyms, places that are designated specifically for women only.”
A 2018 study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that bathroom-related nondiscrimination laws pose practically no risk to women and that claims to the contrary are little more than myths that are “not empirically grounded.”
Mace also elevated the assault claims, arguing Tuesday night on Fox News that “the idea of a man walking into a locker room where I’m changing, is actually—it feels like assault.”
Greene and Mace’s purported support for women’s safety abruptly ends with their fizzling fears over transgender rights, however. The pair of MAGA acolytes are vehement supporters of Donald Trump, who famously said that he could grab women “by the pussy” and is a judge-determined rapist, convicted adulterer, Jeffrey Epstein confidant, and proud abortion rights destroyer.
On Tuesday, Mace introduced a resolution that would ban trans women from using the restroom that corresponds with their gender identity in the U.S. Capitol. The attention-seeking South Carolina representative openly acknowledged that the stunt was a direct attack on McBride—again, who will be the lone transgender woman in Congress—telling reporters on Monday that it was “that and more.”
“Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say. I mean, this is a biological man,” Mace said, adding that the newly elected Delaware congresswoman “does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, period, full stop.”
McBride had her own response to the resolution, describing it in a statement as a “blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing.”
“We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars,” McBride said. “Delawareans sent me here to make the American dream more affordable and accessible and that’s what I’m focused on.”