MTG’s Record
Why I am a bit reticent about being sympathetic.
To follow on from a comment on an earlier post, and because, as I noted there, more than one person has expressed some level of sympathy for Marjorie Taylor Greene, I feel the need to lay down some reminders.
Charlie Sykes at MS NOW provides a helpful run-down:
And while we ought to extend some grace to her, we are not required to embrace full-spectrum amnesia when it comes to one of the more brazen traffickers of conspiracy theories and bigotry. Perhaps now Greene really is experiencing sincere regret. But this is the same MTG who once suggested the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was staged.
She (falsely) suggested that a deadly 2018 fire in California might have been caused by lasers from space. She has (falsely) suggested that 9/11 was a hoax and that Democrats controlled the weather to suppress the GOP vote with hurricanes. She mused openly about a “national divorce” between red and blue states and (without evidence) accused the Clinton family of being involved in murders. She claimed Ruth Bader Ginsburg had been replaced by a body double so that liberals could keep her seat on the Supreme Court.
The way she harassed David Hogg sticks in my head as well.
I will admit that she has been more sympathetic to me in the last couple of weeks, but I also have to consider that some of that is just the partisan filter through which we all view events. She has been, after all, criticizing Trump, and that is a viscerally appealing to a lot of us. Although I have been highly wary of what has looked like some kind of rehabilitation tour, such as her appearance on Bill Maher’s show, where she claimed not to know that citing the Rothschilds was a known antisemitic trope.
Maybe MTG has been a huge dupe, and she is now figuring this fact out. What she does next will tell the tale, and will determine how much sympathy I am personally willing to extend.
There is a scenario in which she could be a force for good, explaining what she has learned to her followers.
I fear the more likely scenario, based on her revealed character from past actions, is a further monetization of her fame.
Or, maybe she fades into the background.
Time will tell.
I saw some speculation she might run for prez. I don’t know if that’s delusional on her part or the speculator’s.
I was going to say I’d had mixed feelings watching her resignation video, but that doesn’t feel quite right. My feelings weren’t so much mixed as they were ping-ponging back and forth between two poles. When she talked about the brokenness of Congress and the impossibility of working against the entrenched forces of capitalism, not only did I kind of agree with her, I was impressed that, unlike so many other MAGAs. she seemed to be completely sincere in her beliefs and not cynically saying whatever worked.
Then she’d start talking about the things she accomplished or wanted to — like helping to kill USAID or fighting to ban abortion (basically protecting American babies because life is sacred while killing uncounted millions of foreign children) — and I’d remember all the ways in which she is really insane and horrible…
She’s a malevolent, antisemitic, antigay bigot. Her broken clock Johnny-come-lately tepid anti-Trumpism does not make her any kind of hero. She’s 5% of the way to where decent people were a decade ago. Big whoop.
The leopard she fed ate her own face. She deserves worse. Good riddance.
Thanks for the reminder about the Jewish space lasers. These MAGA folk have been throwing out so much utter crap, an unending onslaught really, that it is easy to forget some of specific absurdities.
Still, it may be helpful that one of MAGA’s own grassrooters, has come to publicly acknowledge some of Trump’s folly, especially pointing out the impact of his policies on healthcare costs for her working class family members. Time will tell.
So yeah, maybe MTG is no longer worth siccing the “gaspacho police” on her, as she crawls out of her “peachtree” dish. Somebody should give her a departing gift subscription to The Great Courses.
Like most, I was surprised by her announcement and while I’ve enjoyed her recent battles with the felon, the trumpists and calling out R’s in congress, she has done more harm than good. Though she may be one of the few, true populists among the R’s, which is the root of her break with trumpism, but she was awfully slow in realizing the rest of the parties populism was a scam.
If I ever start having a sympathetic vibe about MTG all I have to do is recall the photo of her and Lauren Boebert hooting like howler monkeys at the SOTU in 2022
The fact that she’s a true believer her makes her a much more tragic figure than she would be otherwise.
Just for the storyline, I hope that she is unable to escape the beast she helped create and it destroys her. It would be far more fulfilling than “after unleashing the monster, she recognized that was a poor idea, and then quietly retired and avoided further consequences.”
It feels like there should be a character from Shakespeare for her: Awful woman whose few good qualities lead her down an arguably worse path than if she were just wholly awful, and who eventually curses those few good qualities while failing to recognize her many, many awful qualities that really led to her demise.
Definitely not a main character. A tiny sad drama playing out in a tapestry of worse. Maybe someone who doesn’t even get a name — “second weaselly shithead”
She is a useful reminder that it’s entirely possible to have principles, and for those to be bad principles.
And that stupid people are often surprised that other they believe to entirely share their principle either never did, or are cynical ennoug to adjust them according to perceived advantage, personal or political.
See Rohm, Ernst.
Isn’t it possible that all the wacky stuff she says is meant in some satirical way? It is meant to draw attention and deflect any serious discussion. In some way, that’s what Trump does.
I don’t know that I have feelings about this one way or another. I think she may seek a more lucrative career in show biz (aka punditry). She has a real talent for getting attention, after all. In this economy, that’s bankable.
@Jay L. Gischer:
This is a matter of fact. But functionally immaterial. Because those targeted by the racist, homophobic, crazed bile and lies MAGA spreads and uses to justify its crooked acts are not any less harmed.
Was the tear gas Chicago children choked on deployed satirically? Were the people MAGA deported to an El Salvadorian tortured satirically?
If I’m a Venezuelan fisherman falsely accused of drug running, and Trump blows me up in an illegal strike, I’m still dead whatever is behind the rhetoric of the Boat-iac Killer and his enablers.
Satirical or not may be an interesting observation for academic and dinner table discussion but otherwise largely moot. The pain and suffering is not any less in any case.
Everything Steven and our OTB people have said above, plus … I recall when, in July 2023 in a special hearing before the House Oversight & Accountability Committee, Rep. Taylor Greene shared sexually-explicit photos found on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
I don’t know her motivation to leave now, but, she and her back-bench bomb-throwing colleagues have created the toxic environment that she now feels is victimizing her.
@Mr. Prosser:
If she and Boebert had been paying attention, then they should have known that Biden had just begun talking about his son who had died of cancer, and was just about to invoke Beau’s name as they began howling. Clueless and classless.
@DK: I am all in on “what you do is more important than what you say”.
I sometimes hope folks focus on the terrible things this administration is doing more than the latest “dumb” think somebody said.
The central defining feature of any MAGA is their seething hatred and sense of grievance.
Even if their hatred occasionally targets a truly evil person like Trump, it doesn’t change their essential character.
MTG should never be welcomed into any gathering of decent people.