Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) wanted to be sure everyone knew that she’s celebrating Christopher Columbus today… but she had trouble spelling his name.
Today is Columbus Day, a controversial federal holiday because of Columbus’s legacy of torture, enslavement, and genocide of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Since many on the left criticize the holiday – which is the same day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day – many conservative have decided it’s their favorite day of the year.
Related: Columbus Day celebrates religious persecution & violence. It’s time to get rid of it.
“Happy #ColombusDay!” tweeted Greene this morning.
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She later deleted the tweet and replaced it with a correctly-spelled one, but not before some people got a screenshot.
Someone told her. pic.twitter.com/LHHzsg2zLY
— Carolyn is 3x Vaxxed • ☕🚴😷🔯💗🌞☕ (@LynCKos) October 11, 2021
Greene was mocked online.
Ladies and Gentlemen this is US congresswoman. She spreads false information, attacks the capitol, and she can’t even spell basic words. https://t.co/BUnrdH1Asm
— jay (@jaycho1980) October 11, 2021
When you’re way more racist than you are smart: https://t.co/SaDLBYH0UU
— Janet Johnson (@JJohnsonLaw) October 11, 2021
Dan Quayle got chased out of national politics for “potatoe” and now we’ve got this.
— ariel gordon (@ariel__gordon) October 11, 2021
Columbus Day is one of 11 federal holidays in the U.S. Columbus was a rapist, enslaver, and a murderer whose atrocities were criticized by his Spanish contemporaries and life in the colonies he ruled was considered “horrifying and hard.”
Several states have issued proclamations celebrating today as Indigenous People’s Day. For example, New Mexico celebrates the day to honor the “23 sovereign indigenous nations and the essential place of honor native citizens hold in the fabric of our great state.”
President Joe Biden issued a proclamation making him the first president to do so as well, saying that today “celebrates the invaluable contributions and resilience of Indigenous peoples, recognizes their inherent sovereignty, and commits to honoring the Federal Government’s trust and treaty obligations to Tribal Nations.”
Greene appears to want to stick to celebrating today as Columbus Day… er, Colombus Day. She recently tweeted support for Kyle Rittenhouse, a white teenager radicalized online who shot and killed two people at a protest of the police shooting of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man. Blake was seriously injured and paralyzed due to the shooting.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story incorrectly said that Jacob Blake died in the police shooting. We regret the error.
