Could Greene Be Donald Trump’s 2024 Running Mate?: Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA) did not invent her particular style of politics, but she does appear to have perfected it: It entails an elected official frequently making wild, incendiary, and offensive comments, and basking in the subsequent media attention and fundraising.
While doing so, acts of members of Congress such as policy, legislation, and constituent services are very much secondary.
Former Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann was probably the first in the modern era to do this as an elected official and later applied the same style to a run for the White House. Several other current members of Congress apply a similar style, such as Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO).
Of course, Donald Trump used a version of this playbook during his campaigns and presidency.
But no current elected figure is so associated with that style of trolling politics more than Marjorie Taylor-Greene. She came into office as someone who had at least flirted with the QAnon conspiracy theory, was all-in on the “Stop the Steal” lies about the 2020 election and has made over-the-top comments on a fairly regular basis ever since she was first elected to Congress in 2018.
Most recently, the Congresswoman, in remarks at a controversial New York Young Republican Club dinner late last year, suggested that the January 6 riot would have succeeded if she had been running it.
“I want to tell you something: If Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won, not to mention, it would have been armed,” Greene said at the dinner, which was also attended by “a collection of radical right figures including white nationalists and ultranationalist European leaders,” the Southern Poverty Law Center reported.
The White House slammed the remarks at the time, with a spokesperson declaring that it was “against our fundamental values as a country for a member of Congress to wish that the carnage of January 6th had been even worse, and to boast that she would have succeeded in an armed insurrection against the United States government.”
What’s the method to Greene’s madness?
It’s possible that she just loves the attention, that she really believes all the things she says, or that she is doing it for fundraising.
Indeed, according to Open Secrets, Greene raised about $12.4 million in the 2020 election, which was the 10th most of any candidate. (It works the other way too; Marcus Flowers, the Democrat who ran against Greene in 2020, actually raised more than her in the cycle, pulling in $16.6 million, although Greene won the race with nearly 66 percent of the vote.)
Of course, there may be another reason Greene acts the way she does: A possible run for future political office.
The Daily Beast reported months back that Donald Trump has “repeatedly” discussed, in recent months, the possibility of naming Greene as his running mate, should he once again win the Republican nomination.
Mike Pence, the vice president in Trump’s first term, would not be on the ticket again for obvious reasons, also related to January 6.
Journalist Robert Draper, author of a new book called “Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind,” appeared on a podcast and stated that Trump is looking for someone on the ticket to “fight for him to overturn a presidential election” in a way that Pence did not. “He has every reason to expect that Greene would be by his side and would be his proximate warrior.”
Greene, in fact, has spoken openly, to that same journalist, about her willingness to run with Trump.
“I think the last person that the RNC or the national party wants is me as his running mate,” Greene told Draper for the book, adding that she would be “honored” to serve.
Whether that would have political appeal in a general election, especially after a midterm election in which voters in swing states roundly rejected conspiracy-minded candidates, is another question entirely.
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Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
