Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) ranted about how the U.S. sends money to Africa to prevent the spread of HIV, arguing that if Africans “don’t understand what’s causing AIDS, then they’re on their own.”

Greene was on White House advisor Steve Bannon’s webcast when she began discussing amendments she introduced to cut aid to other countries in the defense appropriations bill. She listed several items she wanted to cut, including hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Israel, Jordan, and Taiwan.

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But then she mentioned some much smaller amounts of aid being used to stop the spread of HIV in Africa. She said that this funding was even more “outrageous” than the military aid to the more developed countries.

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“Let me give you some that I think are outrageous beyond what I’ve already listed,” she ranted. “$15 million for HIV prevention, education, and activities! $15 million for Africa! For HIV prevention, education, and activities. That is absurd! We don’t need to be doing this anymore. If people don’t understand what’s causing AIDS, then they’re on their own.”

Greene expanded on this on social media, saying that people should already know what “activities they need to stop doing to prevent getting AIDS.”

“And I’m sorry and no offense to anyone, but the American people should not be spending $15 million for HIV prevention educational activities in African nations,” she wrote on X. “If everyone doesn’t know the activities they need to stop doing to prevent getting AIDS by now, well I don’t know what to tell you.”

Greene didn’t specify what activities she was referring to, and there’s a chance that she doesn’t know. It’s a subject that even Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert Kennedy Jr. doesn’t understand. He included over 100 pages of quotes from people who deny the connection between HIV and AIDS in his book The Real Anthony Fauci. Kennedy has disparagingly referred to the “orthodoxy that HIV alone causes AIDS” and the “theology that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS.” He has called medications used to treat HIV “absolutely fatal.” He refers to himself as an “AIDS dissident.”

Greene celebrated Kennedy’s appointment to lead HHS.

But it’s also possible that her language about the “activities they need to stop doing” is a homophobic dog whistle. Conservatives often portray HIV as a disease spread solely through gay sex, which isn’t true. Conservatives often suggest people stop being gay in order to prevent the spread of HIV.

Former Vice President Mike Pence famously suggested cutting funding to “organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus” during his 2000 congressional campaign and said that the funding should instead go to “those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior,” or conversion therapy.

Greene has advocated for cutting foreign aid for HIV/AIDS prevention in the past, calling preventing the spread of the disease that has killed tens of millions “wasteful.”

In 2023, she shared a conservative rap video on social media that included homophobic lyrics that linked being gay with getting HIV.

“Fake news always spreading disease, like two queers with HIV,” the lyrics said.

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