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Sen. John McGuire, R-Goochland County, Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and their supporters faced an unruly crowd of protesters at a campaign event in deep-blue Albemarle County on Wednesday that left the congresswoman saying she feared for her life.
“The crowd was … I’d call them insane. They were just out of control, screaming, shouting, coming extremely close to me,” Greene said in a phone interview after the event’s conclusion. “One woman actually came around back and grabbed me, I had to push her off. These people were very aggressive.”
Greene, an unapologetic ally of former President Donald Trump who has made a national name for herself because of her often controversial and at times conspiratorial views, attended the campaign event outside the Albemarle County Office Building outside Charlottesville to stump with McGuire, who is facing Rep. Bob Good, R-Campbell County, in one of the most watched primary elections nationwide this year.
After a comparably peaceful first stop in heavily Republican Louisa County on the eastern part of Virginia’s 5th Congressional District on Wednesday afternoon, McGuire, Greene and their campaign staffers boarded their campaign bus bearing Trump’s name and likeness to travel to Charlottesville.
Upon their arrival, they were greeted by a crowd of about 100 people, of which Greene estimated about 80% were hostile. A reporter with The Daily Progress in Charlottesville who attended the event put the number of protesters at about 50.
Once they left the bus, Greene and McGuire quickly found themselves surrounded by dozens of people carrying various signs and banners.
McGuire said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter: “Today @mtgreenee and I walked into the belly of the beast: Deranged leftists hell bent on destroying this country. Just like President Trump, we won’t be afraid to stand up to the radical left.”
One of the protesters attending the rally said that his group had started gathering around the parking lot at about 3:30 p.m. The man, who did not want to be named out of fear for retribution and who called from a blocked number, said that the bus carrying McGuire and Greene pulled up about 45 minutes later.
“The McGuire and Greene supporters came in and kind of physically tried to own that area around the bus, blocking us from getting closer. There were some of what I’d call near-fights,” the man said. “There was plenty of blame to go around. There was one McGuire supporter who was very aggressive in coming up into people’s faces, and there were one or two people on the Democratic side who took the bait and there was a close-faced screaming match.”
While he watched the police step in, the man said that he didn’t see the officers remove anybody. “They just kind of formed a circle around Marjorie Taylor Greene and her crowd, just to keep everyone a little bit separate. But the protesters were determined to drown out the speeches.”
Greene used a bullhorn to talk to the crowd. “I have been in these kinds of situations before and I never let people drown me out,” she said. “I got out and definitely did some campaigning and did as much as I possibly could. But I felt it was unfair to John McGuire’s supporters that were trying to block these people, and I thought it was unfair to the police. So I thought the right thing to do was to head back to the bus.”
Greene said that there was one man in particular “that had on a head scarf, he was very aggressive, shouting, pushing forward,” and she said she watched police officers blocking the man from getting too close.
“As we were walking back to the bus and the crowd was following us, shouting all kinds of obscenities, saying [expletive], and all these horrible things, he was following very aggressively and closely,” Greene said. “And I’m smiling, because I’m of course maintaining a good composure.”
Greene said as she was about to step back into the bus, the man with the headband pointed and yelled at one of her staffers, shouting “white supremacists” and “Allahu akbar,” she said. “He said, ‘We are going to kill you.’ And he was pointing at my staffer when he said that. One of the police officers was right there and we are in the process of trying to get a hold of the officer.”
A spokesperson for Albemarle County Police could not be reached for comment Wednesday evening.
The protester said that he did not see or hear anything related to what Greene described as death threats. “I didn’t see anybody being aggressive towards the people that came off the bus. It seems a bit like an exaggeration. She’s taking some liberties with the facts,” he said of Greene.
“My takeaway was that this is someone who really enjoys this type of attention. She was trying to make a speech, but she was also smiling throughout. To me it seems like she kind of enjoys that type of controversy, and to say that she feared for her life seems absurd to me.”
Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Charlottesville, said in a phone interview Wednesday evening that because he did not attend the rally, he was unable to weigh in.
“But I think our system is relying on people being able to express their opinions, and I’m sorry if the congresswoman was fearful. But I don’t really know what happened,” Deeds said.
And Del. Katrina Callsen, D-Albemarle County, who also did not attend the event, said that she had not heard of a clash between protesters and the Republican campaigners.
“I heard that it was fairly tame and I would classify it as sort of failed theatrics on her part, coming to Charlottesville in particular,” Callsen said of Greene. “Hate doesn’t have a home in Virginia, and it certainly doesn’t have a home in Charlottesville. And I think that Virginians are really tired of political theatrics.”
For Greene, her experience with protesters in Albemarle was proof that unlike Good, McGuire, whom she endorsed earlier this year, was pushing the right buttons.
“If you’re comparing these two candidates, I don’t think the left is going to come out like this against Bob Good, because John McGuire has my endorsement, and President Trump’s endorsement,” Greene said in the interview. “For whatever reason President Trump and I both draw these insane people. I don’t think they are concerned about Bob Good at all.”
