🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has said Donald Trump didn't know who white nationalist Nick Fuentes was when he visited the former president's resort in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, in November.
Greene defended Trump in remarks shared to Twitter Wednesday and also made reference to a news story reporting that rental cars used by the Secret Service had been damaged in a fire in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on November 28.
Greene said the vehicles "miraculously and magically" burst into flames and urged the media to pay more attention to the incident, despite the fact authorities have concluded it was not suspicious. They have pointed to a faulty battery in one of the vehicles, which was subject to a recall by Ford.
In a video shared by PatriotTakes, a Twitter account that describes itself in part as "researchers monitoring and exposing right-wing extremism," Greene wrongly claimed that President Joe Biden and members of his family had been transported in the rental cars.
"President Trump had no clue who Nick Fuentes is," Greene said. "He had no clue who those people were that came with Kanye West and so it's really unfair to point the finger and it's completely wrong."
Fuentes visited Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate with rapper West, who has legally changed his name to Ye, and they had dinner with the former president. The meeting was subject to significant criticism, including from some prominent Republicans such as Senator Mitt Romney.
Greene also said that Democrats and the media are "completely ignoring the fact that Joe Biden goes home every weekend."
"And while we have a White House log telling us who the visitors are that go to the White House every single day when Joe Biden is there and who visits with him and meets with him, we have log or visitors log or any information of who goes to his house in Delaware when he's at home every single weekend - 25 percent of the time that he has been in office, he has been at that house in Delaware and we don't know what's happening," Greene said.
In October, CNN reported that Biden had spent more than a quarter of presidency up to that point in Delaware.
Greene then discussed what she described as "a weird news story" about how five cars that had been rented by the Secret Service during Biden's Thanksgiving trip to Nantucket had been damaged by fire, a day after the agency returned them.
The Republican wrongly said that Secret Service had driven Biden and his family around in the rented cars and she also wrongly stated that cars were used in Delaware.
The cars were used in Massachusetts and were hired from Hertz, while the fire took place at Nantucket Memorial Airport and just 40 feet away from the airport's jet-fuel tanks.
Greene added that the cars "miraculously and magically and mysteriously combusted into flames and created a massive fire there in the parking lot close to huge gasoline reserves with jet fuel at the airport - very close to there."
"So why isn't the media asking those questions? But yet, they are obsessed with these people going to visit President Trump and what was said," Greene said.
Her comments echo some social-media users who appeared to imply that there was something suspicious about the incident or that the Secret Service was involved.
A Newsweek fact check published on December 1 found that there was no evidence that the agency was responsible for the fire.
Anthony Guglielmi, Secret Service chief of communications, told Newsweek on December 1 that the president travels in "fully armored government vehicles," and not in cars rented by the agency.
The Nantucket fire chief said at the time that an investigation had determined the fire was not suspicious, and while a final determination of the cause hasn't yet been made, officials have focused on a faulty battery in a Ford Expedition that was subject to a manufacturer's recall.
Guglielmi told Newsweek that the Secret Service was "contacted by Hertz indicating that one of the SUVs—[it] was a Ford SUV—had caught fire and it was parked next to several other cars. Because of proximity, those cars also caught fire, but it was [due to] only one vehicle."
Newsweek has asked the White House for comment.
About the writer
Darragh Roche is a U.S. News Reporter based in Limerick, Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. politics. He has ... Read more