Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is targeting House Speaker Mike Johnson with her conspiratorial kvetching in an effort to bring him to heel.
Greene filed a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair last month before the House went on recess, claiming that his support for a spending deal that prevented a government shutdown showed a lack of loyalty to the conservative movement. And Johnson's apparent openness to supplying more aid to Ukraine to fend off Russia’s invasion has sent right-wingers over the edge. But Greene, who called the motion a “warning” to Johnson, didn’t motion for a vote, a move that effectively allows her to leave the threat hanging over his head as potential leverage.
Now, she’s upping the pressure the best way she knows how: by pushing baseless rumors and innuendoes about him.
On Wednesday, Greene was promoting her sit-down interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, in which she suggests without evidence that Johnson may have been “blackmailed.”
Johnson, she claimed, “has made a complete departure of who he is and what he stands for, and to the point where people are literally asking, 'Is he blackmailed?'” When Carlson pressed her for more details, she said she didn't know whether Johnson had been blackmailed. But she went on to suggest that Johnson had defied his faith by backing a bill that included funds for a women’s health clinic and a nonprofit group that provides assistance to trans people, and she questioned what would convince him to do so.
“I mean, how does that even happen from a Christian conservative Republican speaker?” she asked.
Specious claims about Republicans being compromised seem to be the only thing that makes sense to Greene these days whenever conservative lawmakers are at odds with her agenda. In February, for example, far-right activist Charlie Kirk interviewed Greene after GOP Reps. Ken Buck, Mike Gallagher and Tom McClintock voted against impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. In the interview, Kirk suggested without evidence that some Republicans had previously been blackmailed with “naked pictures” of them “with underage girls,” and he asked Greene if the three lawmakers in question had been “compromised.”
As she did with Carlson, Greene said she had “no proof” that Kirk’s suggestion held any merit; but she sure seemed to believe that her own incomprehension was evidence that the lawmakers were up to something shady.
She said:
“You know, I have no proof of that but, again, I can’t understand the vote. So, nothing surprises me in Washington, D.C., anymore, Charlie. Literally, nothing surprises me because it doesn’t make sense to anyone, right? Why would anyone vote no? Why would anyone protect Mayorkas, unless they’re being bribed, unless there’s something going on, unless they’re making a deal, because you can’t understand it.”
It doesn’t take a conspiracy theory to understand why Johnson backed the spending deal. In an election year, it doesn’t serve the Republican Party to be seen grinding the government to a halt. But all this does feel a bit like karmic justice for Johnson, who’s done his share of spreading right-wing conspiracy theories. Now he’s getting a taste of his own MAGA medicine, courtesy of Greene.