U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell, of California, called out fellow Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, for using fentanyl seizures to suggest President Joe Biden was failing to keep drugs out of the country.
Greene cited a litany of statistics to claim the Biden administration was to blame for fentanyl overdoses, and she told witness Rebecca Kiessling, a Michigan mother who lost two children to overdoses, that the president had personally failed her.
“This government has failed you and is failing American families, and most of all it’s failing our children and our young people,” the far-right lawmaker said before her time expired.
However, Greene was swiftly called out by Swalwell “for twisting the facts.”
“I too want to share my sympathy for you and your family, as someone who knows people who have also died,” Swalwell told Mrs. Kiessling. “But I believe that the biggest culprit here, and I think the Republican colleagues of mine agree, is really going after China. I think China has blood on its hands, I don’t think President Biden has blood on his hands.
He added: “I think China has blood on its hands for the fentanyl crisis because, as a number of people have said overwhelmingly, this fentanyl is coming through points of entry and overwhelmingly it’s U.S. citizens and the fentanyl we know is coming over from China, and I think internationally we should all work to apply more pressure on China to account for what it’s doing.”
He then addressed Greene directly.
“Finally, I think Ms. Green is just divorced from reality when she wants to use the fentanyl seizures as a way to beat up on the president,” Swalwell said. “Because Sheriff [Mark] Lamb, you said earlier today that you are literally saving the country with the number of people that you have saved with those seizures, and where I come from, when my brothers make a big seizure that get guns and off the streets, we don’t use that to make a political point.”
“We use that to give an ‘atta boy,’ you know, to the police officers for what they did, and so I’m gonna give y’all an ‘atta boy’ for what you’ve done and thank you, because you’ve taken a lot of fentanyl off the streets and you’ve made us a lot safer because you’ve done it.”
Watch the exchange below.
