Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has her priorities straight: protect the guy who is under indictment and just admitted to check fraud but go after another guy on charges that are demonstrably false because, apparently, it helps with fundraising.
While Greene was in a shouting match with Democrats over the Republicans’ inexplicable defense of serial liar Rep. George Santos (R-NY), she was changing the subject by trying to make President Joe Biden out to be the real criminal.
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Greene brought forth impeachment charges against Biden last week on the grounds that he had subjected the country to a massive influx of undocumental immigrants thereby “endangering the security of the United States and thwarting the will of Congress.”
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The immediate cause for the impeachment was the repeal of Title 42, the Trump-era policy that restricted immigration and that Biden continued until early this month. However, Greene said that Biden refused to enforce immigration laws, contributing to a flood of (supposedly dangerous) immigrants and fentanyl “into the interior of the United States.”
The problem with Greene’s argument is that it’s not really true. The expiration of Title 42 did not bring the tidal wave of immigrants crossing the border, as Republicans had predicted (and perhaps secretly hoped). In fact, immigration numbers have been dropping, despite Republicans’ complaints.
Moreover, it’s not as if Biden’s predecessor did such a bang-up job at the border. For all his boasting, Donald Trump’s record is key respects pretty much in line with Barack Obama’s and George W. Bush’s.
Then again, impeachment is one of the few legislative words that Greene seems to have picked up. This is at least her third attempt to impeach Biden. She filed articles of impeachment against the president for “dereliction of duty” for the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
In fact, Greene has been impeaching Biden since his first full day in office. That’s when Greene filed articles seeking to remove Biden from office, pulling out conspiracy theories about Biden being involved in bribery involving his son Hunter and Ukrainian officials. It was those very same bogus claims that Trump pressured Ukrainian officials about, leading to his own first impeachment.
Greene is promiscuous when it comes to impeachment. It’s not just Biden. Last week she also said she would introduce impeachment articles against FBI Director Christopher Wray (a Trump appointee) and Matthew Graves, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Among Wray’s crimes, says Greene, was the raid on Mar-a-Lago, where Trump was allegedly storing top secret documents that he shouldn’t have had, and the “persecution” of people who “peacefully” entered the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection.
It used to be easy to dismiss Greene as a crank. But House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) owes his position to her, and he’s made it clear that he will defend her no matter what. She sits at the power table in the House GOP.
True, her impeachment articles aren’t going anywhere. But no one in the Republican party is going to call her out for being an extremist, just as no one is going to call Santos out for being a grifter.
When the entire party is pretty much made up of extremists and grifters, it’s hard to single one out from the group anymore.
Marjorie Taylor Greene defends George Santos while trying to impeach Joe Biden for the third time