House Speaker Mike Johnson has tried to downplay Marjorie Taylor Greene’s threats, describing the motion to vacate she introduced last month as nothing more than a “distraction.” “She’s frustrated,” Johnson acknowledged Sunday, but he seemed to think she wouldn’t follow through on her warning shot. “Marjorie’s a friend.”
However, the Georgia Republican may not be bluffing. In an interview with CNN’s Manu Raju Wednesday, Greene said she is “not backing off at all” from her push to oust Johnson if he passes Ukraine funding, calling his proposal to turn the foreign aid into a loan a “steaming pile of bullshit.” “He’s literally turned into Mitch McConnell’s twin and worse,” Greene said of Johnson. “He’s a Democrat.”
“There’s not even any daylight between him and Nancy Pelosi at this point,” Greene added.
Greene is, of course, overstating things a bit. Johnson is a religious-right extremist who played a significant role in Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. The notion that he’s a “moderate” or a Democrat, as Greene described him, is ludicrous. But that’s how things are in a House held hostage by the MAGA movement: Yield even a little to the reality of governance, and you no longer pass the purity test.
Some of this is obviously theatrics. “Nobody cares what Marjorie Taylor Greene says or thinks,” fellow right-winger Bob Good told CNN last week. “And she’s a one-man show. She’s grandstanding, and she wants attention.” But Matt Gaetz’s pursuit to oust Kevin McCarthy began as grandstanding, too; it ended with McCarthy losing his gavel and giving up his seat. Republicans, still reeling from that fight, may not want to go through another round of it—especially with the prospect of Democrat Hakeem Jeffries winding up with the gavel no longer seeming far-fetched. “That’s a risk,” Johnson told Sean Hannity Monday. Greene dismissed that possibility, insisting to Raju that “we can’t get any further left than Mike Johnson” anyway and that her rebellion against him had already “gained momentum.”
We’ll see about that when they meet on Friday to have it out over their dispute. Johnson and his allies seem to think she’s overstating her hand, but the dynamics of a narrow GOP majority in the House mean he can’t count on that.
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