It is dangerous to write off Marjorie Taylor Greene as just a ‘wacky’ distraction – people did that with Trump

Let us assume by now you have heard of Marjorie Taylor Greene.

The 46-year-old Republican who represents Georgia’s 14th congressional district has only been a congresswoman for a little over a month, and yet it feels she is rarely out of the news.

Mostly, the headlines have been about her (previously held) conspiratorial QAnon beliefs, claims that 9/11 did not happen, that school shootings such as the one at Sandy Hook 2012 in Connecticut that killed 26 children and adults were staged, and that fires in the drought-ravaged forests in the American West were started by powerful Jewish figures with space-mounted lasers.

You most likely had not known she was due to sit as a Republican representative on two House committees: the education and budget committees. By now, you probably have.

In the aftermath of the January 6 assault on the US Capitol by hundreds of supporters of Donald Trump, Democrats, joined by 11 Republicans, this week voted to strip Greene of those assignments, as an intended rebuke for her outlandish comments, and support of the former president’s false assertion the election had been rigged.

Now, Greene – or MTG – has seized on what happened to her, and cast herself as a victim of Democratic tyranny, and Republican betrayal.

In a press conference in Washington DC, the day after after the vote in the House, Greene portrayed herself as both a penitent sinner, happy to apologise for having pushed those wild conspiracies, and a casualty of political group-think.

And she did so very convincingly. Dangerously so.

She started by praising the media for being there, and asking reporters to try and get to know her better, rather than relying simply on Facebook posts from two years ago.

“I really love our country. I love our freedoms and I sincerely want all of your children, my children, and all of us, to continue to have the opportunity to have the American dream,” she said. “But our government is failing us.”

She added: “For decades now, this government has sold out our American workers, sent our jobs overseas to foreign countries. We’ve opened our borders wide open to be flooded with illegals coming into our country.”

Being stripped of those committee assignments, she said, was about freedom.

“You see, we have a basically tyrannically controlled government right now. The Democrats have got Joe Biden writing executive order after executive order… doing whatever he wants up there in the White House,” she said.

“We have Nancy Pelosi leading the Democrats in Congress to do whatever they want. They don’t care what Republicans have to say, they don’t care about what our districts and our voters have to say. They only care about pushing their socialist agenda through. They only care about taking away our freedoms.”

She added: “Free speech really matters and yesterday, when the Democrats and 11 of my Republican colleagues, decided to strip me of my committee assignments, you know what they did – they actually stripped my district of their voice. They stripped my voters of having representation to work for them.”

Democrats and others may be tempted to write off Greene as simply another distraction, a wacky congresswoman from the South who believed – past tense – a bunch of crazy stuff she read on the internet. Around the world, it probably takes little effort to see her as just another crazy American, the type of which they have seen plenty.

But it would be very dangerous do so. In 2015, when he slid down the golden escalator in Trump Tower and vowed he was going to become the next US president, many saw Trump in a similar way. As we know, he swept past “favoured” candidates such as Jeb Bush, seized the Republican nomination, and squeaked out a narrow electoral college victory over Hillary Clinton.

In November 2020, despite having been impeached, despite having overseen one of the most divisive administrations in recent US history, Trump received around 75 million votes, the second highest haul ever.

He was also able to persuade many of those people – MTG among them – that the election was rigged, and that Biden’s win was illegitimate. And while the Senate prepares to hear Trump’s second impeachment case, the former president’s influence looms heavy over the Republican Party.

Greene was probably correct on Friday when she suggested she was getting lots of media attention in a similar way to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did when took office – a new face, outspoken, and someone who “really don’t care what other people think about us”.

She was also correct when she said not being on the committees would give her more time to travel and network with other like-minded conservatives – those opposed to abortion, those in favour of a border wall, those who see in Trump an opportunity to feel empowered.

She also made a very clear threat to those Republicans who voted against her.

“There were 11 that voted against me yesterday, and that that's something that our leaders should be very upset about,” she said. “Kevin McCarthy and the rest of the Republican parties working hard and taking back the majority. And when you have Republicans in the ranks voting against one of their own, opening the door for Democrats to go after every single Republican next, that really is a big betrayal”.

She added: “I hope my Republican colleagues really think about what they’ve done. I'm sure they're going to hear from their voters at home, because the base is loyal to President Trump, and the base has been very loyal to me.”

Greene has been accused of making both antisemitic and Islamophobic comments, something she has denied. She has also said she was not in control of her social media accounts when her Facebook page “liked” a comment about killing Pelosi. (When The Independent contacted her office she said would not speak to the foreign media.)

On Friday, she claimed she no longer believed the conspiracies – “I’m sorry for saying all those things were wrong and I am happy to say that”.

But those reporters chasing after Greene, asking why she had not apologised earlier, perhaps missed the point.

It doesn’t matter what she says she believes, or says she does not believe. What is important is that Greene has provided a window into the way millions of Americans do think, and she has burnished her credentials among them as a standard bearer.

(After the press conference, Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, another Trump loyalist, said: “That was so good I almost had to smoke a cigarette afterwards.”)

People may like to imagine they have heard the last of Marjorie Taylor Greene, but we almost certainly have not.