Every time mad-eyed blond blunderbuss Marjorie Taylor Greene opens her big, loud, expletive-fueled mouth, I feel like some of my brain cells spontaneously die.
Since she first appeared on the Washington scene after the 2016 election, “MTG” has proven herself to be a trash-talking, cerebrally challenged, shockingly shameless, attention-grabbing political Barbie for whom no conspiracy theory is ever bonkers enough to reject.
She claimed mass shootings like those at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, were “false flag” operations.
She suggested the 9/11 attacks were part of a government conspiracy and that no plane hit the Pentagon.
She said California wildfires might have been ignited by a space laser controlled by a Jewish cabal that included the Rothschild banking firm.
She claimed Bill and Hillary Clinton murdered political rivals — including JFK Jr. in a plane crash.
She has supported insane QAnon rabbit hole BS that top Democrats are involved in child sex-trafficking, Satan worship and cannibalism.
And so — crazily — on.
In fact, the full list of Taylor Greene’s stupefyingly cretinous comments and beliefs is so long, there literally isn’t enough room in this column to cite them all.
Yet staggeringly, none of this has stopped her rise to one of the most influential voices in the Republican Party — and one of the most dangerous.
This weekend saw the nadir of her nefarious antics as she led a campaign to stop America offering support to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, in urgent need of security assistance to defend themselves from the ruthless totalitarian regimes of Russia, Iran and China.
It shouldn’t have been a difficult bill for Republicans to support.
When three of America’s historical enemies are threatening freedom and democracy, the world’s No. 1 superpower has a moral duty, and obvious self-interest, to flex its financial and military might to help the targets defend themselves.
If not, frankly, why claim to be the leader of the free world?
And don’t give me all this disingenuous guff about how the US should forgo this duty to focus on the domestic chaos at the southern border.
As many conservative commentators like Ben Shapiro have said, the nation can, and should, be perfectly capable of doing both things at the same time.
Yet Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) seems intent on making America abrogate all responsibility for protecting freedom and democracy, and on doing the dictators’ dirty work for them.
Especially with regard to the Ukraine war, during which Moscow Marjorie has become Vladimir Putin’s chief “useful idiot.”
The phrase is apt because it was another Vladimir, Soviet Union founder Lenin, who is thought to have first deployed the scornful phrase to describe naïve, easily manipulated Communist sympathizers in the West who spewed pro-Russian propaganda without comprehending the USSR’s malevolent intent.
Lenin loved what these idiots did on his behalf but despised them at the same time for their treacherous stupidity.
The current Vladimir will feel exactly the same way about the likes of Taylor Greene, whose Kremlin-pleasing rhetoric has made her the darling of Russian state media.
Three weeks ago, she appeared on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast and parroted Putin’s nonsense that Ukraine was waging a “war against Christianity” and Russia is “protecting the religion.” She even falsely claimed the Ukrainian government was executing priests.
In fact, it’s Russia that’s been torturing, kidnapping and killing scores of Ukrainian religious leaders.
And in a House Oversight Committee hearing last week, Taylor Greene repeated more Putin claptrap that Ukraine is overrun by Nazis — only to be corrected by eminent historian Timothy Snyder, who pointed out that no far-right party has ever won more than 3% support in Ukrainian elections, whereas the Russian army “includes openly Nazi formations” and “the government itself is fascist in character, and it is carrying out a war which includes deportation of children by the tens of thousands, the open intention of destroying a state, as well as mass torture.”
Snyder concluded: “So if there is anyone who is sincerely concerned about halting fascism or racism, you would wish to halt Russia.”
Taylor Greene is sadly too dumb or delusional to understand this, but fortunately, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) isn’t, and got the $95 billion foreign aid bill passed on Saturday in a bipartisan deal with Democrats.
He explained before allowing the crucial vote: “I believe that [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] and Vladimir Putin and Iran really are an axis of evil. I think they are in coordination on this. I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe. I am going to allow an opportunity for every single member of the House to vote their conscience and their will. I’m willing to take a personal risk for that, because we have to do the right thing. And history will judge us.”
He’s right, and history will judge him so.
But Taylor Greene’s predictable response was to demand he be fired.
“Mike Johnson’s speakership is over,” she declared on Fox News on Sunday. “He needs to do the right thing to resign and allow us to move forward in a controlled process. If he doesn’t do so, he will be vacated.”
And what was his crime, in her eyes?
“He has betrayed America. He has betrayed Republican voters.”
Hmmm.
A recent survey by the American Action Network, the advocacy arm of the Congressional Leadership Forum, found that 56% of “traditional Republicans” favor aid to Ukraine.
So Johnson has not betrayed Republican voters.
And as for betraying America, he’s not the one being cheered on by Russian state media and Vladimir Putin.
That’s Moscow Marjorie, the useful idiot.