In the runup to the GOP’s new control in the House, the speakership, and Kevin McCarthy’s pathetically desperate bid for the position, the California Republican formed a rather bizarre but extremely devout alliance with none other than Georgia’s QAnon nutcase, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Greene served as the most vehement supporter of McCarthy in his pitiably humiliating desperation to become the next Speaker of the House, at the sacrifice of many of Marjorie’s closest relationships with her fellow Republicans in Congress. To be completely frank, no one’s going to soon forget the epic catfight we’ve seen go down between Greene and her fellow GOP House Rep. Lauren Boebert over the whole McCarthy ordeal. Not to mention the squat Greene took over Matt Gaetz’s bowl of Cheerios.
The whole ordeal has been awkward, to say the least, but it’s left people specifically wondering where all of this loyalty and alliance came from, considering Greene was supposedly harboring some pretty serious animosity over her removal from her committee assignments back in February 2021.
Greene was unceremoniously booted from her committees for “endorsing conspiracy theories, racist dogma, and violence against Democratic politicians.” Yet, in early January, the controversial Georgia House Rep. morphed into a violently loud voice in favor of McCarthy’s bid for the House Speakership, with seemingly zero regards for the price she would pay for that move when it came to her existing relationships in Congress.
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Suffice it to say, the 180 was quick to beg the question — why?
Finally, it seems the New York Times’s Jonathan Swan and Catie Edmondson have an answer for us.
Swan and Edmonson effectively chronicled the developments in Greene and McCarthy’s unconventional relationship from 2021 on forward. According to their report, the relationship between the two began to heal, following the committee debacle, after McCarthy allegedly instructed his general counsel, Machalagh Carr, to go on the defense for Greene against Twitter in an effort to get the congresswoman’s personal account reinstated, following her blatant spread of lies and misinformation amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Times reports that following the Twitter ban, “Instead of telling Ms. Greene that he had no power to order a private company to change its content moderation policies, Mr. McCarthy directed his general counsel, Machalagh Carr, to appeal to Twitter executives. Over the next two months, Ms. Carr would spend hours on the phone with them arguing Ms. Greene’s case, and even helped draft a formal appeal on her behalf.”
The report notes that McCarthy and his counsel’s efforts were ultimately unsuccessful in reinstating Greene’s personal account, leaving her only with her official account for Congress, but nevertheless, the Georgia Republican and notorious conspiracy theorist was “impressed” by Kevin’s efforts.
Apparently, McCarthy’s decision to get in the middle of Marjorie’s Twitter debacle was actually just one leg of a much longer game.
“It was part of a broader and methodical courtship of the hard right by Mr. McCarthy that included outreach to conservative media figures and Mr. Trump’s hard-line immigration adviser Stephen Miller,” the newspaper writes.
According to NYT, the big shift in the pair’s relationship came when former Rep. Devin Nunes told Greene about the time he witnessed McCarthy screaming at then-Majority Leader Steny Hoyer during a party, in defense of MTG.
“Ms. Greene recalled it as the first time she had heard from somebody she trusted that Mr. McCarthy had defended her, rather than conspired with Democrats to blackball her,” the report reads.
Greene told the Times, “That conversation had a big impact on me.”
Things grew from there, as McCarthy began to invite Greene to policy-crafting meetings and Greene began dropping by his office pretty regularly for a chat. According to the report, McCarthy grew to praise Marjorie and her supposed political skills in private: “‘She knows what she’s doing,’ Mr. McCarthy marveled privately. ‘You’ve got A.O.C. and M.T.G.'”
All of this ultimately led to McCarthy making this rather disturbing declaration about the Georgia Republican:
‘I will never leave that woman,’ Mr. McCarthy, a California Republican, told the friend, who described the private conversation on the condition of anonymity. ‘I will always take care of her.'”
Featured image via screen capture
