Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was called out for lying about COVID-19 vaccines Friday by Dr. John Cowan, a neurosurgeon who unsuccessfully ran against her in the Republican primary in 2020.
Interviewed on CNN, the physician and former GOP congressional hopeful said he wanted to see Mrs. Greene appear on the cable network to be confronted about her bogus claims involving COVID-19 vaccines.
“She says a lot of things that are untrue and I would encourage you to bring her on and challenge her on that,” Dr. Cowan said about Mrs. Greene on CNN’s “New Day” program, as first reported by Raw Story.
Reached for comment, Mrs. Greene told The Washington Times: “My voters don’t watch CNN. That’s fake news for Democrats.”
Dr. Cowan, who Mrs. Greene beat in August 2020 to run unopposed as the Republican candidate for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, appeared on CNN to discuss his efforts to encourage vaccination.
Vaccines have proven to be effective at preventing severe illness and death from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, although millions of Americans have chosen not to be vaccinated.
Forty-four percent of Georgia residents are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to the state Department of Health. The Mayo Clinic found only seven other states have a lower percentage of vaccinations.
Mrs. Greene has repeatedly spread misinformation about COVID-19 and the vaccines that fight it, resulting in her being temporarily suspended from the social media service Twitter several times.
“These vaccines are failing and do not reduce the spread of the virus and neither do masks,” Mrs. Greene claimed on Twitter last month. Twitter has since threatened to permanently ban her account.
Several days before appearing on CNN, Dr. Cowan attempted to administer COVID-19 shots at a mobile vaccination center that was set up outside a political rally featuring Mrs. Greene.
Not a single person among the hundreds attending the rally agreed to get vaccinated that morning, Dr. Cowan said on CNN, adding he was able to “put a positive spin on getting vaccinated” regardless.
“The folks who were there saw that leaders in the community had already gotten vaccinated,” he said. “That the face of the vaccine was their neighbor, their relative and people who treated them in other circumstances. I operated on a lot of folks who were at that rally. And if they trusted me to operate on their brain and spine, I would hope they would trust me to give a safe and proven vaccine.
“I’m doing the best I can to promote a safe face of the vaccination,” he said later. “This is really a miraculous vaccine; it was developed under President Trump, it was deployed under President Biden. We have bipartisan support for this vaccine if people want to make it political. If they don’t, please just ask your trusted doctor or health care provider. They’re going to tell you to take the vaccine.”
Americans aren’t getting vaccinated for a variety of reasons, ranging from concerns about the safety and long-term side effects of the vaccines to mistrust of the government to religious objections.
Mrs. Greene received nearly twice as many votes as Dr. Cowan in the Republican primary last year, paving the way for her to run unopposed that November and be sworn in this past January.
“I’m proud of all the healthcare workers who love their jobs, love their patients, and love their freedoms,” Mrs. Greene told The Times. “None of us are anti-vax, we are anti-mandates. I stand with the people and support them.”
Nationwide, about 53% of the population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, including 63.9% of adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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