The internet is a funny place. In just over a couple of decades, it has become the single most cherished component of modern society, right up there with electricity and the automobile. Home to billions of opinions and triple the amount of information, the internet has become a place where curiosity meets knowledge; where people go to learn, stay connected, and sometimes even get famous. On the internet, everyone has a mountaintop, even political figures. (Especially political figures.) Some speak at a normal volume, while others shout. And from her lofty peak in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Georgia’s 14th congressional district, Marjorie Taylor Greene breathes fire.
Greene’s lava-flooded rhetorical landscape is home to some of the most outrageous far-right conspiracy theories in U.S. politics. On her personal and professional social media accounts (Twitter and Instagram), the congresswoman whips her tongue freely as a bee stings, which makes it all the more believable that she would one day, out of the blue, claim to believe modern-day dragons are real. Right?
We’re of course referring to the viral tweet from Feb 2023 in which Greene allegedly announced to her over two million followers that she believes identified dinosaur bones are fake (or, at least, “know [sic?] forgeries,”) dragons are real (and Biblical!) and that somewhere deep down in the ocean, the fire-breathing winged monsters “still exist.”
The tweet caught fire (pun intended) and quickly latched itself to Greene’s resume: Among her beliefs that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was a peaceful protest, trans people aren’t deserving of rights, and that she doesn’t understand basic politics, she was also the firm believer that we live in a modern-day Game of Thrones society.
The real question, though, is if any of it is real.
Did Marjorie Taylor Greene actually refer to dinosaurs as biblical dragons and claim they still exist?
Marjorie Taylor Greene has said many things in her lifetime, most of which have been uneducated, bigoted, or false. Sometimes all three at once. Her laundry list of absurdities makes it completely fathomable that she might one day come out in support of modern-day dragons and deem decades of paleontological work inaccurate. Alas, she never did.
That’s right, the viral tweet in question was never posted by Greene. According to Reuters’ fact-checkers, the post was photoshopped. Before it made its rounds on Twitter, it originated in a satirical Reddit thread. There, it is clearly identified as a “satire/fake tweet” and even has the acronym “lol” inside the comment icon at the foot of the post. Also, there is no timestamp.
So while it’s easy to assume Greene would make a far-out claim such as this, we have to hand it to her. She didn’t compare dinosaurs to dragons, and didn’t claim that they still lurk among us — or, at least, not yet.
The moral of the story: Don’t believe everything you read on the internet. Do your due diligence and fact-check outlandish claims like these, no matter how plausible they might seem.
