DALLAS — Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw doesn’t shy away from criticizing other conservatives. This week, he’s set his sights on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has proven repeatedly she’s not afraid of controversy.
The two House Republicans clashed on social media Monday over COVID-19 testing, just hours after Twitter permanently suspended Greene’s account for posting COVID misinformation on the platform.
The two House conservatives battled it out on multiple social media sites such as Instagram, Gab and Gettr, where Greene, a Republican from Georgia, is still allowed to post.
The feud started last week after Crenshaw, who represents Texas’ 2nd Congressional district in Houston, said in an interview on Fox News that the Federal Emergency Management Agency should use its resources to bolster COVID testing sites. He also suggested that President Joe Biden should work at getting more health care workers either through the military or FEMA to hospitals strained under the new wave of the pandemic.
“What the federal government should be doing again, using their FEMA resources to bolster a lot of these testing sites, open up new testing sites … this is what we saw happen during the Trump administration,” Crenshaw said in the interview.
Greene, who has been critical of President Joe Biden’s COVID mitigation efforts, including vaccine mandates, fired off at Crenshaw on the social media site Gab for calling on the federal government to set up more testing sites.
“No, FEMA should not set up testing sites to check for Omicron sneezes, coughs and runny noses,” she said. As for Crenshaw, Greene said, “he needs to stop calling himself conservative, he’s hurting our brand.”
Gab is a social media site started in 2016 as a self-declared “free speech social network” that became popular with conservatives as well as the alt- and far-right. Its members surged after another social network, Parler, was shut down in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots last year.
Greene’s post also appeared on her Instagram account.
Crenshaw responded to Greene’s critical post on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, which has also suspended Greene’s account recently for spreading COVID disinformation, albeit only for 24 hours.
“Hey Marjorie, if suggesting we should follow Trump policy instead of Biden mandates makes you mad, then you might be a Democrat – or just an idiot,” Crenshaw posted in an Instagram story, which disappears after 24 hours on the site.
By then, the dueling conservatives were both on the offensive as the social media battle continued, with Crenshaw attacking Greene in posts, while Greene went after the Houston Republican and Twitter.
Greene tried to blame Crenshaw for Twitter’s decision to permanently suspend her account by posting on GETTR, another platform founded by former President Donald Trump adviser Jason Miller.
“All I said was NO, we don’t want FEMA doing any of that and hospitals need to hire back unvaccinated (health care workers),” she posted. “Then POOF! I’m kicked off Twitter!”
She later labeled Crenshaw as anti-Trump, saying he “spends more time attacking America First Republicans because he (not so secretly) hates Trump.”
Crenshaw has gone up against Greene and other members of the Freedom Caucus in the past. At a Houston-area fundraiser last month, Crenshaw caught heat online after calling members of the U.S. House’s conservative Freedom Caucus “grifters” and “performance artists.”
Greene is a member of the Freedom Caucus.
Last year, he broke ranks with many Republicans by calling out his fellow conservative members for what he said was rhetoric that played into the violent attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.
On Tuesday, Trump weighed into the conservatives’ social media battle when he issued a statement calling Twitter “a disgrace to democracy,” for banning Greene’s account on the platform.
“They shouldn’t be allowed to do business in this Country,” read the statement, which was posted to Greene’s Instagram account.
“This attack is serious. Americans must leave Twitter now!” she said on Instagram.
