I didn’t realize Breitbart still even existed. And then I read a report the other day noting that the bottom had fallen out of right-wing media... so I decided to take a look. And this is what I found— an absolutely fabulous and completely exclusive interview with Moscow Marge. She began by telling Matthew Boyle that she IS prepared to force MAGA Mike “out of his position with a vote to vacate the chair if the Speaker does not willingly resign the position.” You go, girl!
“Yes,” she told Boyle, “I am willing to force it. The reality for Mike Johnson that he just is not accepting or refusing to accept, publicly at least, is whether it happens two weeks from now, two months from now, or in the next majority, he will not be Speaker. He just will not be. There may be only two of us public right now. But he does not have the support of the conference at all. There may be people who might not vote to vacate him right now, but they will never vote for him to be Speaker next Congress. There are two large factions in the conference against his speakership… Mike Johnson is perhaps the biggest betrayal for America First conservatives across the country because he wears the conservative label and he calls himself a Christian but yet his actions are 100 percent the opposite of what those labels actually mean. He claims to support President Trump but he funded— with a two-part omnibus that broke all of our rules— he funded the Department of Justice that has 91 federal indictments against President Trump and wants to put him in jail for the rest of his life. He funded the FBI that raided Mar-a-Lago and spied on his campaign through FISA, and he gave the FBI a brand-new building. He fully funded Joe Biden’s open border policies and we all know about how horrific that is. He fully funded the Green New Deal and the climate agenda and then last week he betrayed everyone by being the deciding vote against the warrant requirement that I think has more people angry possibly than the omnibus. Then this week he’s moving forward with this foreign aid package and it’s unbelievably disturbing the dirty tricks they’re doing to try to get this thing passed. It’s funding Ukraine. He’s 100 percent into funding Ukraine, talks about it in our conference meetings and talks about how we have to ‘stop Vladimir Putin’s aggression and he’s going to steamroll across Ukraine and take Poland next’ but in every single one of our meetings and classified briefings no one has ever produced proof of that. So it’s so concerning that they’re tying Israel aid to Ukraine and trying to guilt everyone into voting for Ukraine even though they don’t want to vote for it and want to vote for those separately. Then, he’s doing this foreign security package against foreign threats and he’s wrapping in Gallagher’s TikTok ban into this whole package— Gallagher is leaving on Friday so think about that. Why is the TikTok ban so important you have to tie it to Israel aid? You can’t even comprehend how dirty all this stuff is.”
The crackpot gossip monger from QAnon added that she doesn’t— and will never— claim to speak for Señor Trumpanzee but “I do know from back channels he is not fully supporting Mike Johnson and just like you said the spokesperson came out and clarified some of his positions. I think it was extremely unfair for President Trump to be put in that position in the press conference in my opinion. President Trump is laser-focused on winning his election, which is what he should be focused on, and he’s laser-focused on defeating these political trials that he’s having to endure— he’s going through one right now and he’s going to have to miss his own son’s high school graduation, which is extremely upsetting. It’s unspeakable actually— it’s so wrong. So, for Mike Johnson to run down to Mar-a-Lago to get as close as possible to President Trump was literally because he was trying to save his speakership. That’s what that trip was all about. President Trump was coming out to talk about election integrity, which is just as important to all of us and that was the right thing for him to do. I thought he was put in a very unfair position in that press conference and it should not have happened. Shame on the Speaker’s staff for doing it. They shouldn’t have put him in that position. I’m also thankful to President Trump because in his comments he called me a friend— because I am his friend. I fight for him up here in Washington. I’ve traveled the country for him. I am constantly supporting him more than most people. I am very high up there in every single thing I do for President Trump. It doesn’t faze me that Johnson is trying that strategy. Of course I get it. It’s clear what he was trying to do. But his speakership is not safe. As a matter of fact, it’s over— he’s just the only one who hasn’t acknowledged it.”
One more dubious rebel without a cause, Traitor Greene ally, Matt Gaetz is also another travellin’ Member of Congress. According to Punchbowl News, Matt was part of a contentious meeting Tuesday night in MAGA Mike’s office, hissing and snarling at other Republicans that he would personally campaign against every Republican Member of Congress who voted for Ukraine aid. As if his colleagues didn’t hate him enough! I bet Mike Lawler (R-NY), Anthony D'Esposito (R-NY), Don Bacon (R-NE) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) would absolutely love to have Gaetz come to their districts to campaign against them! I asked Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin what he thought about the prospect of a Matt Gaetz tour of GOP districts to foment internal dissension. He had a straight-faced recommendation: “He should definitely bring Vladimir Putin with him too!”
One person who’s certainly not worried about Gaetz is Mike Gallagher (R-WI), who had planned to step down on Friday afternoon but now says he may stay around so he can vote for MAGA Mike’s package of bills and, presumably, against Moscow Marge’s motion to vacate the chair. On the other hand, according to Olivia Beavers, yesterday Ohio Putin lackey, Senator J.D. Vance, encouraged the House Republican Study Committee “to block debate on their own speaker’s foreign aid plan— an uncommon effort by a member of one chamber to sway policy across the Capitol.”
In an editorial for Fox News, conservative commentator Liz Peek had a message for Moscow Marge “Get over yourself... It’s high time someone in the Republican Party told Marjorie Taylor Greene to turn all that bombastic self-serving showmanship and drama queen energy on Democrats, and stop trying to defeat her own party. The Georgia Republican, who famously displayed sexually explicit photos of Hunter Biden during a committee hearing and called fellow representative Lauren Boebert a bitch on the House floor, is known for wild antics and equally harebrained conspiracy theories… The internal squabbles of the party need to stop. If Marjorie Taylor Greene and others want to oppose aid to Ukraine or the FISA bill, they can vote against it. That’s how democracy works.”
Peek’s not alone among conservatives disparaging Moscow Marge. Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger were fuming at her antics yesterday as well. They recognize that, regardless of the ravings of Traitor Greene, Gaetz and the other extremist rebels, MAGA Mike in reality is a coalition speaker. (By the way, above when I noted that Gaetz is a rebel without a cause, a reference to James Dean biggest movie of the same name, I was conflating Gaetz with anyone who rebels against authority (or norms) without a clear or understandable motivation, acting rebelliously merely for the sake of rebellion, lacking a coherent purpose or direction behind their actions. My intention was not to compare Gaetz— let alone Moscow Marge— with James Dean but to convey both of their aimlessness and spoiled-brat discontentment as they seem to be seeking meaning and identity in their vapid, shallow lives through defiance while lacking any kind of specific goal or ideology to guide this rebellion.
Even if Johnson survives another motion-to-vacate showdown, having to rely on Democratic votes to do so would further cripple him as a party leader, sapping his ability to win concessions from Senate Democrats and the White House in policy fights in the future. If you happen to care about Republicans achieving conservative policy wins, it’s a teeth-grinding state of affairs. Last week, National Review’s Rich Lowry denounced Greene’s case against Johnson as “a stew of conspiratorial thinking and sophomoric ranting”:
Doing a little somnology from afar, Greene also noted that Johnson is always complaining that he’s tired and only getting three hours of sleep. Since she, too, has been very busy in her life but always gotten seven or eight hours of sleep a night, she believes this shows that Johnson must have a guilty conscience that’s keeping him up . . .
Maybe Johnson’s sleep is disturbed by the thought that his majority is so small that someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene matters. And who can blame him?
It’s worth remembering how things got to this point. Despite his tiny majority and the prostrations he’d had to make to fringe elements in his caucus, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy spent most of last year managing to keep the government functioning while extracting modest concessions from President Biden on things like the growth of future spending when he could. He even greenlit highly embarrassing exercises like an impeachment inquiry into Biden as a way of showing his hard-right flank he’d be their staunch ally when he could.
But he refused to flip the negotiating table and spark a government shutdown— which led hardliners like Rep. Matt Gaetz to insist Republicans would be better off without him. Gaetz led the charge to strip McCarthy of power, then took a victory lap: “We’re concerned about the future of the conservative agenda in the house,” Gaetz told reporters after McCarthy lost the gavel. “I would say that the conservative agenda was being paralyzed by Speaker McCarthy… the best way to advance the conservative agenda is to move forward with a new speaker.”
Did this bold new conservative-agenda House ever materialize? Uh, no. Instead, blackpilled institutionalists started bailing out early, further whittling down the GOP majority by the day. Johnson is thus now in a more precarious spot than McCarthy ever was. McCarthy could afford to lose the support of four Republicans. Johnson will be cooked if he loses two, and is thus more beholden to Democrats than McCarthy ever was.
Awwww… So MAGA Mayk isn’t pro-Putin enough for Trump and the congressional Russo-Republicans! And now they’re trying to figure out who gets the gavel when Moscow Marge ousts him. Only a completely corrupt psychopath— Tom Emmer— would even want it! Yesterday a trio of CNN reporters wrote that there are now “delicate internal discussions about who could potentially replace him.” Emmer would kill for the job and is already working the room big time. “Another potential contender who sources believe could run for the top job in the next Congress: House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, who also mounted an unsuccessful bid for speaker last year. Jordan has publicly backed Johnson and wants him to keep his job. But the Ohio Republican is still beloved by [fascists], and sources believe he could have a strong case to lead the conference next year— especially if Trump is back in the White House. Others who could be waiting in the wings: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who also previously ran for speaker, and House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, a top Trump ally.