Because no matter how terrifying the Republican political landscape is, it can always get worse, Marjorie Taylor Greene says she’s been in “continuous talks” with Donald Trump to be his vice presidential running mate in 2024.
Trump has long been saying he plans to run for president again in the next election and it makes sense that he would pick the most extremist, recklessly inflammatory member of Congress to take that journey with him. When Trump picked Mike Pence to be his VP back in 2016, Pence was seen as a sort of neutralizing figure in the campaign. He was a real normie politician compared to Trump and he—a religious zealot who had already waged war on abortion and LGBTQ+ people in Indiana—was clearly meant to appeal to the religious right who might other wise find Trump unpalatable.
But that’s no longer the base Trump cares about appealing to. The perfect person for his campaign now would be someone who gives full-throated support to conspiracy theories from QAnon to stolen elections to the idea that the January 6 insurrection was carried out by “antifa”—a thing Greene has said she believes while also somehow declaring that the Trump-supporting insurrectionists are unfairly persecuted political prisoners. Logic and facts clearly aren’t important to Greene and far from being a liability, that’s basically her main selling point for getting on Trump’s campaign.
The VP revelation comes from New York Times Magazine writer Robert Draper, who spoke with Greene while writing a new book about the extremist radicalization of the Republican Party. He told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi this weekend that Trump first raised the possibility of tapping Greene for the job back in February and that the two have been in talks “for months.”
Draper noted that Trump is probably having these conversations with a number of people but that doesn’t mean Greene isn’t a real possibility. According to a report from Rolling Stone, Trump is also considering her for other top positions in his potential administration. That terrifying report reads:
“Wouldn’t she be great?” Trump privately said earlier this year to a confidant, one of the two people says. It is unclear what specifically Trump has in mind for the severely MAGAfied Georgia Republican, be it a White House staff position, cabinet post, or agency appointment, the sources say. But, “he loves MTG and would want her very close in a second term, that much was clear,” one source says.
The second source recalls that over the past year, the ex-president had briefly mentioned Greene’s name as someone who could be in the running to be a senior official at the Justice Department during a second Trump administration. The former president’s comment confused the source, because “I don’t think she’s a lawyer,” this person says.
Since she was elected, a lot of people have been insisting that Greene is too fringe to actually have any impact on real politics, and that we therefore don’t really need to pay attention to her or take her seriously. But not only is she on track to win reelection to the House, but she’s become a central figure in the far-right radical faction of the GOP that has been steadily gaining power with no signs of stopping.
(image: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
Published: Oct 24, 2022 02:00 pm