Daily US Times: Mitch McConnell, the top Republican senator, has intensified pressure on Marjorie Taylor Greene, the extremist Georgia congresswoman, calling the “loony lies and conspiracy theories” that she endorses a “cancer for the Republican party”.

In a statement to the Hill on Monday night, Mr McConnell did not name Greene personally, but his excoriating attack was clearly targeted at the new member of Congress who is a fierce supporter of former president Donald Trump.

The congresswoman embrace of the racist conspiracy theory QAnon and other extreme positions is causing turmoil among Republican lawmakers and across Congress.

McConnell said: “Somebody who’s suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr’s airplane is not living in reality.”

In keeping with her defiant rejection of any criticism, the Georgia congresswoman immediately fired back at McConnell through her Twitter feed, saying: “The real cancer for the Republican party is weak Republicans who only know how to lose gracefully.”

The intervention of McConnell raises the ante in the debate about what to do with Greene. Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives have indicated that they are prepared to expel her from several congressional committees should Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, fail to do so first.

Just weeks into her arrival in Congress, Greene’s offensive and bizarre stances on a range of subjects have created a rising chorus of calls for her to be censured.

Marjorie Taylor Greene was filmed in 2019 harassing David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland school shooting in Florida, which Greene has claimed was an “false flag” act of make-believe.

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