Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has drawn the ire of Republicans in Washington D.C. Greene, who was one of President Donald J. Trump’s biggest supporters and filed articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden, is under assault from the mainstream media.
Senator Mitt Romney said Republicans “should have nothing to do” with Greene. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that “loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party and our country.”
If anyone knows what Greene is experiencing, it’s former Fourth Congressional District Rep. Steve King. King said he has been on the phone with people in D.C. and is attempting to soak up what he can to get a handle on the political dynamics of the situation.
“It’s fairly complex and it’s moving,” he said. “Democrats are pushing hard.”
Democrat House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer delivered a 72-hour ultimatum to GOP leader Kevin McCarthy to kick Greene off her committees.
The Iowa Standard predicted Greene would be the new target in Congress with King’s departure. And sure enough, one month into the new year, the liberal media is already writing about giving Greene the “Steve King treatment.”
King speculated that there could be floor against Greene, she could be stripped of her committees or even expelled from Congress.
“This is awful,” he said. “The people doing this are OK with AOC, who accused Ted Cruz of attempted murder. That doesn’t get a blip on their scale. Every one of them is for killing babies.”
King said he hasn’t been able to find the original source of their allegations. Some of the criticism has been about posts Greene “liked” on social media.
It is possible, he said, Greene did not personally like those posts but instead, her social media staff did.
“CNN unearthed these social media posts that they’re making an issue out of and that’s what the media will do,” he said. “Of course, they will bury Hunter Biden’s files all day long and censor anybody who wants to talk about it, but they’ll dig into conservatives.
“Are we really going to kick people out of Congress or out of committees because we don’t like their opinions?”
King said the First Amendment protects freedom of speech and he noted that voters have rights.
“This isn’t isolated to Democrats now,” he said. “Kevin McCarthy is poised to have this meeting with her. I know what those kinds of meetings go like – McCarthy decides what he’s going to do and then the meeting is a formality.”
He has advice for Greene.
“I want her to know that she can’t trust McCarthy,” he said. “He will lie to her face and then he will lie about her. I’m confident in saying that because I’ve lived it and I have the proof. There was no amount of facts that I could push in front of McCarthy’s eyes or ears that he would respond to in any way.”
With so much coming at her from so many places, King said the momentum, the media and the Democrats will continue to turn things up and put heat on McCarthy.
“One thing that is helping her right now is Liz Cheney can’t take any cheap shots at Marjorie because she’s on the ropes herself,” he said. “So that changes the dynamic of this. (Steve) Scalise has been fairly quiet and is trying to stay out of the line of fire. If leadership could potentially have a couple of casualties over time, Scalise would like to be the guy this time who is not wounded in that fight. I can see where McCarthy is walking a very careful line. If he brings the heavy hand down on Greene, he’ll alienate a bunch of conservatives that he wants to vote for him as Speaker. It’s kind of a trap of his own making because of what he did to me.”
And with that in mind, King is watching with peaked curiosity.
“I’m kind of here on the 50-yard line with a bowl of popcorn,” he said. “I don’t know that Greene knows that if she is kicked off of her committees, that is a political death sentence. That’s a historical fact. McCarthy knows that.”
King speculated McCarthy will attempt to have Greene promise to “go dark” and “be quiet” and “not impactful” for a “long enough time to satisfy him.”
“Which will be a long, long time – like forever,” he said. “And in exchange, he will not kick her off committees. I don’t think that Marjorie is going to take that. I think she’ll push back and say she came there to make a difference and she’s going to do it.”
That scenario would set up a showdown with Hoyer and his 72-hour ultimatum.
“The Democrats are not going to accept a promise to go dark and let this thing play its way out,” King said. “They sit over there with the highest degree of hypocrisy one could imagine not troubling them at all.”
King reiterated Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s statement about Cruz trying to get her killed. He highlighted Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s seat on the Foreign Affairs Committee and the conflicts surrounding that situation.
Voters should ultimately be the ones who decide the fate of the elected officials, King said.
“We should never be afraid of an idea we disagree with,” he said. “I’m afraid of developing a civilization that’s going to censor ideas because that means the brakes come on on any progress we might make.”
Greene is seeing firsthand the lesson King learned as well.
“They assign a belief system and then they interpret the language that they can find to mean what they’ve already assigned,” he said. “They are using Alinsky tactics on her. One of those overlooked Alinsky tactics is to isolate the target from sympathy. People need to just know that is what they’re doing.”
The only prediction King said he could make is that if Greene is kicked off her committees, it’s a “political death sentence.”
“And I know that,” he said. “They might censure her on the floor or might even try to expel her from Congress. In keeping with what Democrats are doing – going after anybody who has supported President Trump – she has Trump’s support and let the public know that. It’s more delectable bait for the Democrats.”
