Republican Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has said that she and Republican Florida Representative Matt Gaetz are “taking charge” in a Republican “civil war.”
“Matt and I have teamed up because we refuse to allow Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger or any Trump-hating Republican … we won’t allow the GOP to turn into their party. So we’re taking charge. We’re bringing it to the people,” she said during a recent interview with the Real America’s Voice network.
“We know what the people want,” she continued. “The people overwhelmingly support President Trump as the leader of the Republican Party.”
The “civil war” she referenced likely has two sides. On one side are those like Greene and Gaetz who think that Republican former President Donald Trump and his unapologetic, outspoken style represent the party’s future.
One the other are Republicans—like Representatives Cheney of Wyoming and Kinzinger of Illinois—who reject Trump and his baseless claim that the 2020 election was “stolen.” They see Trump and his claims as dangerous to democracy, alienating to voters and distracting from policy battles.
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Both Cheney and Kinzinger have accurately said that there’s no proof to back up Trump’s repeated claim that an unprecedented nationwide conspiracy of voting fraud caused him to lose the 2020 election. They have called Trump’s claim “dangerously irresponsible.”
Both also voted to impeach the former president for inciting the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Several insurrectionists have said they were following Trump’s orders to stop Congress from “stealing” the election from him.
Greene and Gaetz, however, have cheered on efforts to re-examine the 2020 election for proof of fraud. The two have begun an “America First” tour starting in Mesa, Arizona, claiming that ballot audits will prove Trump right.
Speaking in Mesa last Friday, they praised the ongoing ballot audit happening in Maricopa County. Though the audit has been called a “joke” by state Republicans, Gaetz and Greene insisted that similar audits will soon occur in other blue states won last November by Democratic President Joe Biden. The two pledged to visit Fulton County, Georgia—another site where Trump alleged voter fraud—as their next tour stop.
In Mesa, Arizona the two denounced Republicans who oppose Trump’s election fraud claims.
“Just because you have an ‘R’ by your name and you say things doesn’t mean you’ll do them when you run the country,” Greene said. “This is why so many people don’t vote. They don’t trust Republicans to do the job.”
In mid-April Gaetz declared himself as a member of the “America First Caucus” launched by Greene. A leaked seven-page document announcing the caucus’ formation said that it championed “uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions.”
The caucus document was widely criticized as racist. Kinzinger referred to the caucus as the “White Supremacy Caucus” and said that its members should be expelled from Congress. The same day the document was leaked, Greene said she was “not launching anything,” that she had never seen the document and that a third-party had created it.
Congressional Republican leaders have publicly denounced Greene’s comparison of COVID-19 mask mandates to the Jewish Holocaust and her past support of extremist conspiracy theories. However, the same leaders also helped facilitate a vote to oust Cheney as the party’s third-ranking leader because of Cheney’s repeated public remarks against Trump and his baseless fraud claims.
Newsweek contacted Greene’s office for comment.
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