Why is Marjorie Taylor Greene seen as part of the GOP fringe?: Ever since she first surfaced as a candidate for Congress in the 2020 cycle, the Georgia Congresswoman has been seen as one of the fringiest figures in American politics.
Is that characterization fair?
Marjorie Taylor Greene: What Is She Doing?
Back in April, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene became part of a national controversy for what was far from the first time.
The latest occasion was her defense of Jake Teixeira, the young man arrested at the time for leaking a large cache of classified materials.
“Jake Teixeira is white, male, christian, and antiwar. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime. And he told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine and a lot more,” Greene said on Twitter last week.
“And he told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine and a lot more. Ask yourself who is the real enemy? A young low level national guardsmen? Or the administration that is waging war in Ukraine, a non-NATO nation, against nuclear Russia without war powers?”
This got Greene denounced by members of both parties.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney even called for Greene to lose her security clearance, according to NBC News.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene makes clear yet again that she cannot be trusted with America’s national security information and should not have a security clearance of any kind,” Cheney, a longtime Trump critic, said on Twitter.
Greene was also bashed by a prominent sitting Republican lawmaker, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Graham said on CNN at the time that the comments were “terribly irresponsible and puts America in serious danger.”
What MTG Does
That represented Greene’s modus operandi in a nutshell. Marjorie Taylor Greene will say something nutty and seemingly over the top, get denounced by opponents across the political spectrum, and then bask in the media attention that it attracts.
This began prior to her time in Congress, when she was a vocal backer of the QAnon conspiracy theory. However, more recently, Greene has backed off of full-on Q beliefs, blaming “the Internet” for opinions she expressed just a few years ago.
“I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true and I would ask questions about them and talk about them,” Marjorie Taylor Greene said in early 2021, in a rare moment of regret and apology, “and that is absolutely what I regret.”
Other Greene stunts have included putting up an anti-trans poster outside the office of a lawmaker who has a trans daughter; heckling President Biden during the State of the Union address, and her call earlier this year for a “national divorce” between blue and red states. These are only a few examples.
The goal of Greene’s style seems to be to draw media coverage — and along with it, fundraising — for her over-the-top musings. In fact, a Google search for the phrase “Marjorie Taylor Greene slammed for” returns over 9,000 results.
Marjorie Taylor Greene: Now in a Position of Power?
For Greene’s first term in Congress, she was mostly a sideshow.
She was banned from serving on committees, and her party was not in the majority. But this year, when Republicans took control of the House majority, Greene has formed an alliance with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and was not part of the faction that vocally opposed McCarthy’s push for the speakership.
Since then, Greene has gotten committee assignments again, including a spot on the high-profile House Oversight Committee and Committee on Homeland Security. This has allowed Greene to play to the cameras during televised hearings.
Once search hearing was one of the latter committee, in March, when Greene questioned U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz, asking Ortiz about a “bomb” that had supposedly been found near the U.S. border with Mexico. Ortiz first said that he couldn’t reveal confidential information, but later confirmed that what was first thought of as a “bomb” was in fact fake, and “filled with dirt.”
The exchange did not prove Greene’s point, but it did bring her media attention.
Expertise and Experience:
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.
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