Last week, the House of Representatives did their job: They held someone who had ignored a congressional subpoena in contempt, much to the ire of the party of law and order. That person is Steve Bannon. The committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack wanted him to provide certain documents and answer some questions. He didn’t comply and now he’s in big trouble. This made the GOP furious, among them Marjorie Taylor Greene, who made a big huff out of confronting Liz Cheney, one of the only nine Republicans who voted against Bannon, only to get summarily owned.
Cheney wasn’t the only person to push back against Greene. CNN’s Jim Acosta caught up with the congresswoman after the vote, and managed to get some predictably unhinged comments out of her. The first time he approached her, she kept on walking, responding tersely. When Acosta asked Greene why she came for Cheney, Greene responded, “She’s a traitor.” When asked how she could say that, Greene replied, “Pretty easy.”
The second time Acosta confronted Greene, she was more forthcoming about why she refused to hold Bannon in contempt. “The rationale behind my vote is I’m not self-absorbed like the rest of these jerks in Congress,” she replied. “They’re all ignoring inflation — people can hardly buy food. Gas has gone up.”
This has been a common go-to line with die hard Trumpists, including Matt Gaetz: that there are bigger fish to fry than finding out how democracy was almost toppled by its outgoing president and company. It’s their attempt to dodge the issue. Acosta, though, asked why she thought her colleagues were “jerks.”
“Because they’re self-absorbed,” she repeated. “All they care about is Congress. They don’t care about the American people who pay all the taxes.”
Greene then came for Acosta. “All you want to talk about is your Trump Derangement Syndrome, and all you want to talk about is January 6 where there was a riot here,” Greene railed. Acosta then asked why she wants to protect Bannon, to which she cryptically replied, ““Because I care about American PEOPLE.”
It was at this point that fellow Republican representative Pete Sessions interrupted them, dragging her away from Acosta and his crew. As she left, she left him with an even more mysterious statement: “What about all the people rotting in jail? Why don’t you worry about them.” Presumably she means the perpetrators of the Jan. 6 riot, whom people like her and Gaetz have been calling “political prisoners.” But of course, very little of what Greene said answered any of the questions Acosta asked her.
You can watch Acosta’s chats with Greene over at CNN.