Twitter Suspends Majorie Taylor Greene’s Account

In a newly uncovered exchange, Marjorie Taylor Greene in 2018 agreed with a Facebook commenter who claimed that 9/11 “was done by our own gov[ernment]” and that “none of the school shootings were real or done by the ones who were supposedly arrested for them,” including the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Greene, who was previously a right-wing commentator, won election in 2020 as a Republican in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. 

The 31-day campaign against QAnon
In Georgia, what happened when a ‘nice guy’ named Kevin Van Ausdal ran for Congress against a candidate known for her support of extremist conspiracy theories.


By Stephanie McCrummen
OCTOBER 17, 2020

There was a time when Kevin Van Ausdal had not yet been called a “loser” and “a disgrace” and hustled out of Georgia. He had not yet punched a wall, or been labeled a “communist,” or a person “who’d probably cry like a baby if you put a gun in his face.” He did not yet know who was going to be the Republican nominee for Congress in his conservative district in northwestern Georgia: the well-known local neurosurgeon, or the woman he knew vaguely as a person who had openly promoted conspiracies including something about a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles.

Anything still seemed possible in the spring of 2020, including the notion that he, Kevin Van Ausdal, a 35-year-old political novice who wanted to “bring civility back to Washington” might have a shot at becoming a U.S. congressman.

So one day in March, he drove his Honda to the gold-domed state capitol in Atlanta, used his IRS refund to pay the $5,220 filing fee and became the only Democrat running for a House seat in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, which Donald Trump won by 27 points in the 2016 presidential election.

He hired a local campaign manager named Vinny Olsziewski, who had handled school board races and a couple of congressionals.

He came up with a slogan — “Save the American Dream” — and posted his first campaign ad, a one-minute slide show of snapshots with voters set to colonial fife-and-drum music.

He gave one of the first public interviews he had ever given in his life, about anything, on a YouTube show called Destiny, and when the host asked, “How do you appeal to these people while still holding onto what you believe in?” Kevin answered, “It’s all about common sense and reaching across the aisle. That’s what politics is supposed to be like.”

All of that was before August, when Republican primary voters chose the candidate with the history of promoting conspiracies, and President Trump in a tweet called her a “future Republican Star” and Kevin began learning more about Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose first major ad featured her roaring across a field in a Humvee, pulling out an AR-15 rifle and blasting targets labeled “open borders” and “socialism.”

He read that she was wealthy, had rented a condo in the district earlier in the year to run for Congress, and that before running she had built an online following by promoting baseless, fringe right-wing conspiracies — that Bill and Hillary Clinton have been involved in murders, that President Obama is a Muslim, and more recently, about the alternate universe known as QAnon.

“I’ve seen some mention of lizard people?” Kevin said, going through news articles to learn more about QAnon. “And JFK’s ghost? Or maybe he’s still alive? And QAnon is working with Trump to fight the deep state? I’m not sure I understand.”

He plunged deeper, reading about a world in which a cryptic online figure called Q is fighting to take down a network of Democrats, Hollywood actors and global elites who engage in child-trafficking and drink a life-extending chemical harvested from the blood of their victims. He read about an FBI memo warning that QAnon followers could pose a domestic terrorism threat, and the reality sank in that the only thing standing between Marjorie Taylor Greene and the halls of Congress was him. Kevin.

“I’m the one,” he said. “I’m it.”

* * *

That was how the campaign began. Thirty-one days later it was over, and within those 31 days is a chronicle of how one candidate representing the most extreme version of American politics is heading to Congress with no opposition, and the other is, in his words, “broken.”

It is an outcome that was in some ways years in the making, as all but the most committed Democrats in northwestern Georgia had long become Republican, or abandoned hope of winning the mostly White, mostly rural district of gun shops and churches, leaving the Democratic Party so weak that in 2018, the nominee for Congress was a man who had run a nudist retreat.

But as Greene gave a victory speech railing against the “hate-America left” and calling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a “b----,” Kevin sensed an opening. He would counter her extremism with moderation. He would talk about jobs and health care. He would double down on civility. As he told Vinny soon after hiring him as campaign manager, “People say I’m a nice guy, and I am. I think that’s the best approach.”

That was his plan, and meanwhile, in the days after Greene, who declined to comment for this story, became the Republican candidate, interest in the race grew far beyond the borders of Georgia as more and more people began realizing that the alternative to Greene was a guy named Kevin Van Ausdal.

“Vote for Kevin! He’s a regular dude!!” one person posted on Kevin’s campaign Facebook page.

“We need earnest people in Washington to solve real problems — not conspiracy nuts!” someone else wrote.

“America needs you Kevin!!” another person wrote.

As more people began following the campaign, Vinny realized he was going to need help, so he hired a deputy campaign manager named Ruth Demeter. He brought in a national consultant named Michael McGraw, whose firm specialized in long-shot bids, and now the new team was on a video call laying out a revised strategy to present to Kevin.

“Okay, first, an update on the current state of the race. Last night Marjorie went on a posting spree,” Michael said. “George Soros is behind a conspiracy to destroy America. The media is the enemy. You name it. She is not toning anything down. Any questions on that?”

He noted that out of roughly 413,000 registered voters in the 14th District, Greene’s winning vote total was less than 44,000, and that “we’re not seeing her promoted by Republican Party networks we’re used to.” He mentioned a political operative to whom Greene had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, someone who has described himself as a “hard-charging and controversial conservative consultant.” He said Greene had expressed support for the 17-year-old charged with killing two people during protests in Kenosha, Wis., calling the case the “first stage” of a new “Civil War.” And he said that while Greene was now distancing herself from QAnon, she had the support of QAnon social media groups as well as an array of local gun groups including one called the Georgia III % Martyrs.

There was a pause.

“Any questions on that?” Michael said, then explained what voters needed from Kevin:

“They want Kevin to fight. What they are looking for is a forceful response saying, ‘This is wrong. This is very wrong. This is horrifying. And we are not going to sit by and just let this happen.’ ”

They decided Kevin would have to address Greene directly in a strong video statement that would signal that the campaign was no longer a homespun fife-and-drum outfit but a major operation to defeat a candidate whose views they would call out as “extremist.”

“We need to be sure Kevin is comfortable with where we’re going,” Vinny said. “Ruth?”

“We’ve got to do it,” Ruth said.

“Okay,” said Vinny, and later that afternoon, they video-called Kevin, who listened as Michael explained: “We have to dramatically step up our language. I know this is not the place you’d like to be, but it’s the place we’re in now.”

Kevin nodded.

Then Michael laid out in strong terms how he saw Greene framing the election, however preposterous his interpretation might seem: “Marjorie Greene is fighting for the soul of America and she will do anything it takes to save America, up to and including walking up to her Democratic opponent and shooting him in the head.”

Kevin didn’t say anything.

Michael continued: “That would be justified because she is saving America.”

Kevin was still quiet.

“This is so far away from the race you wanted to run, and I’m honestly kind of sorry about that, Kevin,” Michael said. “So, take your time with that.”

But there was no time. Ruth was already talking about getting a new camera for Kevin to record the video statement. Someone else was considering the backdrop — Kevin’s kitchen? A park? Michael was going on about the “horrifying hellhole” they were all entering.

“This is the most toxic campaign most of us will ever see,” he said.

“If anyone needs a mental health day, please let me know,” Vinny said.

Kevin cleared his throat.

“How’re you doing, Kevin?” Michael said.

* * *

No one on the team was thrilled with where all this was heading. Vinny was used to working on campaigns that focused on issues, not name-calling. Michael felt that “far too many campaigns aren’t talking about governing but just telling you who to be mad at.” Ruth was a Canadian American who felt ill watching videos of Greene’s speeches, and even more ill seeing her neighbors in the audience applauding.

But they all agreed that ignoring Greene was not an option, so they began drafting the statement and emailing versions to Kevin, who kept suggesting revisions that made it softer, thinking he had made it harsher.

“He needs to be ready,” Vinny told Ruth on one of their daily video calls.

“I don’t know what it’s going to take to get him to use the kind of language we need him to use,” Ruth told Vinny. “It’s a very big shift for him.”

“How’s it going?” she said to Kevin on Day 21 of the campaign, trying to sound upbeat as they began to rehearse the draft statement.

Kevin said he had been trying to stay relaxed. He had a cold.

“Okay, I know you’re not feeling well, but the good news is, sometimes when you need to push through a barrier, the best time to do that is when you’re sick, because your defenses are down,” Ruth said. “We’re not going to take you anywhere horrible.”

“We’re good,” Kevin said.

“Okay, I want you to breathe deeply,” Ruth began. “A lot of your tonality will have to go down. There will be times when you’re speaking about what Marjorie has done and you’ll be angry. You’ll need to be angry.”

More often in his life, Kevin could not afford to be angry. His voice tended to swing up, a tone he found helpful in defusing conflicts in his job at a financial services company, which had enabled his first real stability as an adult. He’d only recently bought the tan split-level where he lived with his wife and 1-year-old daughter. Now it had a “Save the American Dream” sign in the flower bed by the mailbox, one of the stories of his rise into the middle class he’d imagined telling voters about when he first started running.

Another story was about the time he learned to install plumbing so that he and his wife could have running water in their trailer. Another was about finishing his college degree, working at an amusement park and selling his plasma for extra money to pay bills.

He was going to talk about growing up in a town outside Gary, Ind., where his mother was a municipal clerk and he’d worked as a page in the state legislature, feeling inspired by the marble and soaring rotunda and noticing how people would call a representative’s office for help solving some problem, which was how he got his idea of what politics could be, all of which was beginning to feel like long ago.

“So,” Ruth continued. “Talk to me about the things about Marjorie that are dangerous and embarrassing and appear to disregard the 14th District.”

“Okay, well, it’s really just the fearmongering?” Kevin said. There was the upswing, but Ruth let him go on. “It’s defining us. I don’t think I ever told you this, but I said to a preacher early on, you know, Jesus wants us to come together and love each other regardless of our beliefs. So when we’re fanning the flames of fear and violence — ”

“Okay,” Ruth interjected. “I love ‘fanning the flames of fear.’ But Kevin, I’m going to tell you something right now that’s really hard. This statement is about reaching people in the middle, and a lot of them are Republicans. For them, the language about love and peace is bad, or just not in their wheelhouse. … It’s got to be, ‘This has got to stop. I’m calling this out.’ ”

“Okay,” Kevin said.

“Try that ‘Enough is enough’ line,” Ruth said.

“Enough is enough — wait,” Kevin said, then tried again. “Enough is enough.”

“Oh, I love that,” Ruth said.

“I’m not going to act like this is a normal election,” he continued.

“Oh, that’s really good,” Ruth said.

“Enough is enough” Kevin repeated over and over, practicing the statement his team wanted to post as soon as possible to his 1,500 Facebook followers, and meanwhile, Greene had posted a new Facebook video for her 100,000 followers.

“We have had enough,” she began, launching a tirade against “the radical left” and “Marxist BLM” and “these thugs, these domestic terrorists, these anarchists, these insurrectionists” and the Democrats’ “globalist plans, their open-border plans, their take your guns away plans, their abortion kill babies up to birth and maybe even afterwards plans.” She urged people to enter a raffle to win the AR-15 she’d used in her campaign ad because “socialism does not belong in America” and “we need to blow it away.” And then, for the first time, she addressed Kevin.

“I’m running against a radical Democrat. A Democrat socialist. He’s an AOC progressive — that really means communist — candidate,” Green said, referring to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), “who absolutely loves AOC and Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, you know, king of the basement dwellers. So, help me beat this Democrat in November. Help me go on to Congress.”

Below the video, her supporters began posting comments.

“WWG1WGA,” one wrote, using QAnon code for “Where we go one, we go all.”

“Gloves are off,” another wrote.

The comments kept coming, and Kevin, trying to calm his nerves, went into a spare bedroom, shut the door, and stayed there long enough that his wife finally texted him from another part of the house to see if he was okay.

“She is calling for a civil war!” he texted back, referring to Greene. “And I am expected to call her out tomorrow!”

He waited for a response. He and his wife had been having marital problems for a while, and the campaign wasn’t making anything better. When she did not write back, he texted again.

“F-----g crazy ass white supremacist terrorist support her. She is radicalizing them and I am supposed to call her out and become her enemy.”

“Omg really,” his wife texted back.

“I am not joking” he texted back.

“Wtf,” she texted.

“I am f-----g breaking down,” he texted back, not that anyone on the campaign team knew any of that was happening.

* * *