During an appearance on this week’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) defended her motion to vacate challenge to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) speakership.
According to the Georgia Republican lawmaker, her effort was not to cause “chaos,” but to force change.
Transcript as follows:
BARTIROMO: Well, we know that you are holding on to the majority by a hair.
And here you are raising now perhaps a wrecking ball. People are attacking you for this within your own party. Can you explain this move?
GREENE: Yes, absolutely, Maria.
Just as you heard Eric Trump talk about his father, Donald Trump, who will never back down from the attacks from Democrats, Republican voters all over the country expect the exact same thing from Republicans in the House of Representatives, where we hold on to a razor-thin majority.
But yet, this week, Speaker Johnson, who has barely been a speaker for six months, led us to a complete catastrophe. He passed a giant omnibus bill, the second part of it, this week on Friday after breaking the 72-hour rule, only giving Republicans a day to read 1,012 pages, and not allowing us to pass amendments to make any changes to this bill, which Chuck Schumer had stuck full of a Democrat wish list and kept the Biden catastrophe border policies going.
This comes after the tragic death of Laken Riley. This comes after Americans have been watching on the videos showing military-aged men, illegal aliens, rushing the Texas border, running over Texas National Guard and Border Patrol.
Americans are sick and tired of failure in the House of Representatives. We are barely hanging on to our republic, a nation in debt with over $34 trillion in debt. And we cannot have a Republican speaker of the House that is willing to do the bidding of Chuck Schumer, handing over the gavel to him, and letting him pass the Schumer House bill on the floor, and not allowing any of us Republicans to do our jobs.
BARTIROMO: Well, why is it that you are having such trouble securing the border?
Go through some of the things in this bill that relate to border security and the things in this bill that you find are inappropriate.
GREENE: There is nothing in this bill that secures the border.
This bill that Johnson passed does everything to keep the Biden administration’s horrible, horrible border invasion, the deadly, daily invasion, going every single day. The House Republicans have passed incredible border security bills, like H.R.2 and the Laken Riley Act.
Speaker Johnson’s one chance, his one chance to truly secure the border is with the power of the purse. And that’s in these funding bills. If Speaker Johnson really wanted to secure the border, like he promised all of us he would and promised the American people, then he would have told Chuck Schumer, we will not pass any government funding bills until our border, our border and funding bills have the H.R.2 in it or the Laken Riley Act, or at least some measures within them.
But he didn’t. He completely failed in that. And he let Chuck Schumer pass this bill in the House, because Speaker Johnson forced it on Republicans.
BARTIROMO: But — but people are…
GREENE: This bill not only did nothing for the border, Maria.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
GREENE: It funded full-term abortion clinics. It funded horrific trans woke policies that target children in this country.
This was not a Republican bill. This was a Democrat bill.
BARTIROMO: Yes, but people even in your own party are attacking you, saying, we do not need more division.
I mean, after all, Congresswoman, look how many people have left, Ken Buck stepping down, Mike Gallagher stepping down. And Mike Gallagher is leaving at a time that even makes things tougher for the Republicans, right? He’s leaving early, isn’t he?
GREENE: You’re right, Maria.
And those people stepping down early and leaving are the ones that are leaving us at risk of the Democrats controlling the majority, not me. I filed this motion to vacate, but I haven’t called it to the floor. This is like issuing a pink slip and giving our conference a notice, saying that we have got to find a new speaker.
This may take weeks. It may take months. It may not even happen until next Congress, but Speaker Johnson cannot remain as speaker of the House. Speaker Johnson has also failed our majority, because he is allowing Mike Gallagher to leave Congress after the deadline date, where his district cannot hold a special election and elect a new representative for the rest of this entire Congress.
Mike Gallagher betrayed all of us. And Speaker Johnson, as the one who’s responsible for our majority, praised Mike Gallagher on Friday after he announced his departure, saying that he’s great and praising him and thanking him for his service in Congress.
Speaker Johnson should be forcing Mike Gallagher to leave early, so that his district can hold a special election. And any strong Republican speaker of the House would expel a member for leaving our razor-thin majority in such a delicate, delicate state. We cannot allow — we cannot allow this.
BARTIROMO: So what you’re saying is, he’s leaving, and the date that he chose to leave leaves that region of Wisconsin without a representative. You can’t even do a special election there. So you have got just no vote there.
Are you concerned that this move that you are making is going to hurt the 2024 elections? Is this actually going to hurt your candidate, President Trump?
GREENE: Not at all.
President Trump is overwhelmingly winning this election, poll after poll, because he’s a fighter and he’s a champion for the American people. I argue that the House would lose the majority if we didn’t have President Trump on the ballot. President Trump is going to drag every single Republican across to victory, whether they deserve it or not.
BARTIROMO: OK.
GREENE: And I can tell you, right now, Republicans are fed up with it.
Republican voters want fighters in the House of Representatives…
BARTIROMO: Yes.
GREENE: … to fight like President Trump. And that is exactly what I’m doing.
BARTIROMO: OK.
GREENE: I will force change. I’m not bringing chaos. I’m forcing change.
BARTIROMO: Real quick, Congresswoman. We got to go.
But, real quick, what you’re saying to me this morning is that this is a pink slip. You may not bring it to the floor when you come back from Easter recess to get Mike Johnson out, but you want to make a message that you are not going to accept any more of no security at the border.
Is that what you’re saying?
GREENE: That’s what I’m saying.
It’s a promise to my conference. Keep the investigations going. Keep the committee work going. Let’s do the good work that we’re doing. I haven’t drawn a deadline, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t call it to the floor and force a vote to have it.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
