Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s farewell-to-Congress media tour made a stop at “60 Minutes” on Sunday night. Interviewed by Lesley Stahl, the early-retiring Georgia Republican lamented the current moment’s “toxic political culture,” which she said is “not helping the American people.” This comes on the heels of comments she made last month to CNN, when she said, “I would like to say humbly I’m sorry for taking part in the toxic politics.”
But, Stahl noted in the “60 Minutes” interview, “You contributed to that. … You were out there pounding, insulting people.” Greene responded by saying Stahl had contributed to the toxic political culture herself by being “accusatory” in the way she questioned Greene.
This is why Greene’s attempted image rehabilitation should be nipped in the bud.
Greene may have found herself exiled from the toxic MAGA community in which she found power and stardom, but she doesn’t appear to be much interested in an honest reflection on just how much damage her words and actions have caused. Rather, she’s trying to whatabout her way through what ought to be an exhaustive mea culpa.
Just because Greene ran afoul of President Donald Trump over her insistence that the Jeffrey Epstein files be released does not mean she’s expressed any meaningful contrition after she spent years using violent rhetoric, making bigoted statements and spreading false conspiracy theories — especially Trump’s “big lie” about election fraud in the 2020 election. That lie itself is a horrifically destructive fraud that Trump is hell-bent on writing into American history as a grave injustice that was resisted by righteous “patriots” (aka Jan. 6 rioters, including the cop-attacking violent extremists among them).
Greene’s attempted image rehabilitation should be nipped in the bud.
In July 2023, Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., submitted a House resolution calling for Greene’s censure. The text of the resolution is a thorough (though somehow not comprehensive) recap of MTG’s most toxic displays of politicking.
Balint’s resolution correctly notes that Greene:
“… has repeatedly called for violence against elected representatives and their families”
“… said that the mask mandate in the House of Representatives was akin to Jews being ‘put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany’”
“… tweeted that ‘Vaccinated employees get a vaccination logo just like the Nazi’s [sic] forced Jewish people to wear a gold star’’
“… appeared at a White nationalist event [hosted by Nick Fuentes on Feb. 26, 2022] that was condemned by the Republican Jewish Coalition as ‘appalling and outrageous that a Member of Congress would share a platform with an individual who has actively spread antisemitic bile, mocked the Holocaust and promoted dangerous anti-Israel conspiracy theories’”
“… posted a tweet [on Sept. 1, 2022] comparing President Joe Biden to Adolf Hitler that said ‘Joe Biden is Hitler. #NaziJoe has to go’”
“… said [on July 21, 2021] that if she was ‘in charge’ she would ‘kick out every single Chinese in this country that is loyal to the CCP. They would be gone’”
“… tweeted [on Nov. 22, 2022] that an LGBTQ California State Senator was a ‘communist groomer’”
“… posted a video on Facebook [on Feb. 22, 2019] claiming that Muslim-American Members of Congress were not ‘really official’ because they didn’t take the oath of office on the Bible”
“… referred to fellow Muslim-American Members of Congress as the ‘Jihad Squad’ [on May 10, 2021]”
“… said [on Dec. 10, 2022] that if she had organized the January 6 attack on the Capitol, ‘we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed’”
“… displayed graphic pornographic images during an official committee hearing [on July 19, 2023] that she claimed depicted a member of President Biden’s family”
Are we to believe Greene’s really sorry about all that?
And of course there’s Greene’s pre-Congress days of characterizing the mass shootings in Las Vegas and Parkland, Florida, as false flag events, the actual perpetrators of which were trying to get gun control legislation passed. There’s also the matter of her past affinities for conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, QAnon and the Rothschilds. And her calls for violence against Democrats. And her filing articles of impeachment against Joe Biden on the second day of his presidency.
It’s hard to choose the single most odious tweet in MTG’s catalog, but this one from the day after Trump was almost assassinated by a 20-year-old man with no discernible political agenda could take the cake:
“We are in a battle between GOOD and EVIL. The Democrats are the party of pedophiles, murdering the innocent unborn, violence, and bloody, meaningless, endless wars. They want to lock up their political opponents, and terrorize innocent Americans who would tell the truth about it. The Democrat party is flat out evil, and yesterday they tried to murder President Trump.”
That was barely a year and a half ago.
Are we to believe Greene is really sorry about all that? Or is she trying to pull a Glenn Beck, who infamously gave an interview to The New York Times in November 2016 that was titled “Glenn Beck Is Sorry About All That,” about how his contributions to toxic political discourse led to the rise of Trump? (Beck, of course, was not really sorry about all that, and became a devoted Trump sycophant in short order.)
Greene’s real regret is that after being a loyal acolyte of Trump — the most consequentially toxic American political figure in generations — and a happy warrior for the closest real-life analog to the “Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party,” the personality cult turned on her.
And her attempt to rewrite her own history is very Trumpian — while acknowledging she’s no longer welcome in MAGA, Greene is continuing to frame herself as somehow a victim of the broadly defined left or the establishment or … Lesley Stahl. So don’t be suckered by Greene’s laments about contributing to “toxic politics.” Words — especially apologies — mean nothing when they’re not backed with substance.
