Marjorie Taylor Greene Becomes The Onion Meme; Criticizes GOP Leaders For Gov’t Shutdown
from the welcome-to-the-resistance,-space-laser-critic dept
It’s a meme so famous it has its own Wikipedia page. And like plenty of memes with this sort of pedigree, its origins are humble: just another article by The Onion (or rather its Clickhole offshoot). You know the face and you know the words:
Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point
To Marjorie Taylor Greene’s credit, she’s done this more than once. She’s the wild card in the GOP party, but not the kind that might lead to another win. She’s the other kind of wild card: the unknown and unpredictable factor that occasionally delivers debacles and flame outs, rather than the easy, uncomplicated heist of democracy her party is actively engaged in.
So, when MTG goes rogue, it means something. But it possibly means less than if a staid backbencher suddenly stood up and declared Trump wrong about anything. That said, we’ll take what we can get when the takings are so meager and limited in quantity.
Here’s Taylor Greene saying what everyone knows, but no one else in her party will say:
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is continuing to buck GOP congressional leadership, placing blame on top Republicans Thursday morning for failing to pull the government from its ongoing shutdown.
“I’m not putting the blame on the president,” Greene (R-Ga.) said in an interview on CNN’s “The Situation Room.” “I’m actually putting the blame on the speaker and Leader [John] Thune in the Senate. This should not be happening.”
Government shutdowns are a GOP specialty under Trump. This time around, though, the White House has expressly politicized the shutdown via its official websites, which is just another line this administration feels comfortable crossing.
The administration is angry because Democratic legislators won’t sign off on every ridiculous thing the Republican party is demanding in exchange for a barely-functioning government. In addition, it’s clear the GOP doesn’t actually want the shutdown ended, what with the administration using it as an excuse to lay off or fire people it wasn’t able to get rid of back when DOGE was still a going concern.
Marjorie Taylor Greene placing the blame where it belongs (speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Senate leader John Thune) definitely bucks the trend when it comes to Republican discussions of the ongoing shutdown. The GOP has aligned with the administration, which has chosen to publicly blame (again, via official government websites) the Democratic party for a crisis the GOP deliberately created to use as leverage to push through even more odious legislation.
Taylor Greene, of course, is no angel. Between her COVID conspiracy theories and her insistence that some sort of Jewish-controlled “space laser” caused California wildfires, Taylor Greene has been nothing but batshit crazy while somehow maintaining access to considerable public power. Pizzagate, QAnon, replacement theory, etc. have all been part of Greene’s arsenal for years. But this time, she’s actually right. There’s no conspiracy here. There’s just the GOP holding the government hostage until it gets what it wants.
And now, her super-weird form of local advocacy has turned her into the rogue the GOP can’t control. It’s not just this recent shutdown. It’s a whole lot of things the GOP would rather pretend simply didn’t exist, beginning with the Epstein files and running right through the healthcare price hikes their constituents will be facing if the GOP manages to pass the budget bill it has proposed:
Greene has continued to be a thorn in the side of Republican leadership in recent weeks, splitting from President Donald Trump and the GOP on a string of major topics — calling the war in Gaza a “genocide,” campaigning for the release of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case and pushing for an extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies.
MTG — however momentarily — has just become one of us: people who can not only see through the GOP’s increasingly stupid lies, but know that America’s never going to be great again with these motherfuckers in charge. There may be hope for Taylor Greene after all. But if recent history has anything to say about it, the new, improved MTG will be just as unpredictably awful as she was prior to this brief return to reality.
Filed Under: conspiracy theories, donald trump, gop, government shutdown, marjorie taylor greene, trump administration
Comments on “Marjorie Taylor Greene Becomes The Onion Meme; Criticizes GOP Leaders For Gov’t Shutdown”
Well, she’s correct. Just don’t get rid of that 10′ pole quite yet.
Real pain
The funniest thing for me is how the same people who spent years cutting public services indiscriminately now have to spend weeks filling the airwaves with defenses of said public services, which avoid
said Mike Johnson (https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5552958-mike-johnson-government-shutdown/ ).
Speaker Johnson claims he won’t allow the House to go back to work until the government shutdown is over, claiming the House did its job, but his own measure to keep the government open has failed seven times now in Congress.
How can the government that he shutdown reopen until Johnson gets back to work with the House in session to negotiate a bill that will pass?
Also, how many times has Donald said that the ultimate responsibility for any government shutdown falls on the President of the United States?
What happened?
MAYBE,
She started reading her EMAIL.
Maybe she Learned that being NEUTRAL when reading bills being passed, is a better way to READ DOCUMENTS.
She Learned to read?
Some one took her hand and Showed her the Full process of how things WORK in Congress, and HOW things get abused? Like adding Extra parts at the end of a bill, that Have NOTHING to do with the bill, except to Piss everyone off.
Her Husband Sat her down and Showed her HOW the old world treated Women, and that WHEN all this crap gets passed, that HE can beat the living hell out of her, and never goto court for abuse. As well as SHE WILL NOT BE ALLOWED IN CONGRESS, as NO WOMEN WILL BE ALLOWED.
Re:
Don’t be ridiculous. You think she read the whole budget? Even I don’t do that.
Greene is a troll who realized she had diminishing returns on attacking Democrats for everything, so she switched to attacking the party in power, even if it’s “friendly fire.” If the Democrats regain power, she’ll resume her previous schtick. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was delusional enough to think she was setting herself to become president by pretending she’s an equal opportunity critic. If she was compassionate, she wouldn’t be a Republican, so no points for accidentally saying the right thing once in a while. She’s complicit in the current power structure.
Re:
I think you’re seeing strategy where I’m seeing a complete absence of it. I know people like her; they’re incapable of compromising, considering other points of view, or long-term planning, but most of all they’re incapable of shutting the fuck up.
Marge isn’t saying anything that everybody else doesn’t already know. She just doesn’t have the discipline to stick to the script.
Plus, she hates Johnson as much as everybody else, she just isn’t willing to hide it to curry favor with him.
Re: Re:
Fair enough, but there have been a few articles recently talking about her possibly gearing up for a presidential run. I don’t see her getting far since she’s pissed off MAGA and she’d never be able to pass as a Democrat, but I wouldn’t put it past her to think she has a chance.
'Uhh, umm, we only seat new democrats on the 33rd of each January!'
The administration is angry because Democratic legislators won’t sign off on every ridiculous thing the Republican party is demanding in exchange for a barely-functioning government. In addition, it’s clear the GOP doesn’t actually want the shutdown ended, what with the administration using it as an excuse to lay off or fire people it wasn’t able to get rid of back when DOGE was still a going concern.
Well, there’s that, and there’s also that if congress goes back into session Mike Johnson will have to find some other excuse for why he refuses to seat the recently elected democrat that would, by my understanding, be the last signatory needed to force a vote on releasing the Epstien files, something a whole bunch of republicans really don’t want on the record this close to an election given how many of them would vote ‘No’.
Re:
I believe what he’s trying to do is flip at least one Republican from a “yes” to a “no” so that he can seat Grijalva without her forcing a vote on the Epstein files.
Okay but regardless of the shallow switcharoo, can we give the other GOP members whatever flavor of cool aid she’s currently drinking?
I hope that one day M:TG puts out a set of cards based on all the crazy things that came out of MTG’s mouth.
Yeah, crappy people, on rare occasions, make good points. This happens. Recognition of this is a sign that you care more about the points being made than the person making them (this is a good thing – especially in this day and age).
I encountered this not too long ago when I found out Pierre Poilievre, the insufferable leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, pointed out that Bill C-2 (Canada’s warrantless wiretapping bill) is an invasion of privacy. Even some of my right wing acquaintances were shocked when they found out I agreed with him on that point. They were even more floored when they found out that I said he made the right call not to support the bill.
Now, this isn’t to say that I’m suddenly a die hard Poilievre supporter (I’m most certainly am not), but I know a good position when I see one. I’m also not going to just cheaply hide the fact that I agree with him on something for the sake of partisanship. What I will do is stick to the world where facts and reality matters. Sometimes, that means running into the awkward moment where people you think are scum are making a perfectly valid point. It can be a weird feeling, too.
Side note: I’m no fan of MTG.
Didn’t the Democrats reject a continuing resolution that didn’t have a bunch of new junk in it? They were demanding the reinstatement of stuff that was set to expire. Maybe they shouldn’t have been playing budget games when they passed that stuff.
(Of course both sides play this game. Pretend your favorite spending program or tax cut will expire in a few years so you can claim the budget impact isn’t that big, then never let it actually expire.)
Re:
Specifically, the ACA subsidies. Which the Republicans killed with the Big Beautiful Bill.
Democrats couldn’t block that cut then, as it was one of those bills that can’t be filibustered. So they are fighting to stop US healthcare getting worse.