As Republicans and Democrats loudly booed her Wednesday when she called a snap vote to impeach Speaker Mike Johnson in the House of Representatives, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, paused to relay the drama to viewers at home.
“This is the uni party, for the American people watching,” Ms. Greene sneered, peering over her glasses at her colleagues like a disappointed schoolteacher.
Ms. Greene then took her shot at Mr. Johnson and missed, an outcome she knew was a certainty. The vote to quash her attempt to impeach him was an overwhelming 359 to 43 — with all but 39 Democrats joining Republicans in blocking her and save the GOP speaker.
The move galvanized Mr Johnson and cemented his status as the leader of an unlikely bipartisan governing coalition in the House of Representatives that Mrs. Greene considers the ultimate enemy. And it isolated Ms. Greene on Capitol Hill, leaving her back where she was when she arrived in Washington three years ago: a provocateur and subject of ridicule who seems to relish causing her colleagues a huge headache.
“Hopefully this is the end of the personality politics and frivolous character assassination that has defined the 118th Congress,” Mr. Johnson said after the vote.
The word “hopefully” did a lot of work.
If Ms. Greene's goal in Congress was to chair a powerful committee or build political capital to push major policy initiatives, this would all pose a major problem for her. But those were never the incentives that drove the mild-mannered lady from Georgia, whose career in Congress was defined more by delighting her base and stoking anger on the right than by legislative performance or political pragmatism.
In her eyes, she got something better this week by pushing for the vote: proof that Mr. Johnson had betrayed the Republican base and allowed himself to be co-opted by Democrats when he worked with them to pass many major bills, including one to send aid to Ukraine – and that many in her own party had been complicit in the deal.
“I'm very happy with the whole thing,” Ms. Greene said in an interview on Thursday, upbeat after her spectacular defeat. “Even the cheering from both sides – I fully expected it. My district is happy with it.”
On Wednesday night, centrist Republicans tried to create as much distance from her as possible, fearing that association with her theater would alienate voters in their districts from the seemingly endless chaos in the House of Representatives.
“All she wants is attention,” said Rep. Carlos Gimenez, Republican of Florida. “Today we closed it. Our entire conference said, 'Enough is enough – we don't need to hear from her anymore.'”
Representative Mike Lawler, Republican of New York, must have called Ms. Greene “Moscow Marjorie” more than a dozen times in the past week as she made her threat to impeach the speaker. “Moscow Marjorie has clearly gone off the deep end,” he said on Wednesday.
But if Mrs. Greene is on an island with her party now, she hasn't been there very long and a rescue boat is probably on its way to take her back to the mainland. Once stripped of her committee assignments by Democrats and treated like a pariah, Ms. Greene has been elevated by her party's leaders for the past two years, rated as a top advisor by former Chairman Kevin McCarthywho vulnerable Republicans leaned on as a helpful fundraiser and was publicly praised as a dream teammate by centrist lawmakers in her party.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene, she is so nice,” said Rep. Jen Kiggans, a vulnerable Republican from Virginia. said at a recent event. “She has been very nice to me.” Of Ms. Greene and other bombers in her company, she said, “I have nothing bad or, you know, anything else to say about these people. They're on my team, right? They are my teammates. We all want the same thing.”
Former President Donald J. Trump has made it clear that she remains on his good side. He waited until the House of Representatives rejected Ms. Greene's impeachment effort on Wednesday evening, posting a message on social media calling on Republicans to block it. And before praising Mr Johnson, he wrote: “I absolutely adore Marjorie Taylor Greene. She has Spirit, she has Fight, and I believe she will be around for a long time, and she will be on our side.”
If that's what abandonment by her party looks like, who needs a hug?
“He's not mad at me at all,” Ms. Greene said of the former president on Thursday. “I talked to him a lot. He is proud of me.”
Ms. Greene said she spoke with Mr. Trump after he released his statement on Wednesday evening saying Republicans should not fire their chairman at least for now, with an eye on winning the November election. “He covered for everyone,” she said. “I told him the statement was fantastic.”
Democrats, for their part, are unwilling to let Republicans move away so quickly from Ms. Greene, the most famous Republican in the House of Representatives.
Missy Cotter Smasal, a Democrat who is challenging Ms. Kiggans in coastal Virginia, said that “when voters hear her call Marjorie Taylor Greene a teammate, they are surprised and disgusted.”
Although Ms. Kiggans voted Wednesday night to quash Ms. Greene's effort, Ms. Smasal used it as a cudgel against her Republican opponent the next day, just as Republicans had tried to warn Ms. Greene when they pressured her to resign. .
“Jen Kiggans in office enables Marjorie Taylor Greene's chaos,” she said. A spokeswoman for Ms Kiggans did not respond to a request for comment.
Justin Chermol, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said that “if Republicans lose their majority in November, it will be because so-called moderates let Marjorie Taylor Greene be their party mascot.” On Wednesday, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, sent a fundraising email describing how Ms. Greene “threatened to further plunge Congress into chaos, crisis and confusion.”
Ms. Greene laughed off the idea that her actions this fall would help elect Democrats — the argument that everyone from Mr. Trump to Republican Rep. Jim Jordan had tried as they stopped her from ousting the speaker.
“Republicans will come out in droves for Trump,” she said. Using an acronym for “Republican in Name Only,” she continued: “Then they go down and they see that RINO Republican that they've elected over and over again — who didn't impeach Biden, who didn't do anything on the border — they are going to see that guy and they're going to call him names under their breath and skip his name.
Ms. Greene said Thursday she didn't really care whether she was isolated or not.
“When I'm on an island,” she said, “I'm doing exactly what I came here to do.”
“I feel very comfortable with my company,” she added. “I can be their biggest cheerleader, supporter, advocate and donor. I've given about half a million to the National Republican Campaign Committee. I am a team player. If they betrayed us, I fully support the people.”
In 2023, Ms. Greene made the maximum contribution in more than a dozen vulnerable Republican races in the House of Representatives, including to colleagues representing districts that President Biden won in 2020, such as Reps. David Schweikert of Arizona and Mike Garcia of California.
On Thursday morning, Ms. Greene made it clear that she was not done tormenting Mr. Johnson.
“Speaker Johnson is the Uniparty Speaker of the House!” she crowed on social media.