Marjorie Taylor Greene is Not Going Away
She has the perfect mix of crazy and clueless to be a rising Republican star.
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you were sent this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.
I have a theory about the 2024 Republican presidential campaign - the crazier the candidate, the better their chances of success. And I don’t mean “pretend crazy,” but actually crazy. After all, that’s how Donald Trump became President of the United States.
There are numerous explanations for how Donald Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016. But I often think back to a piece I wrote about Trump in July of that year, right after he called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to hack and release Hillary Clinton’s emails.
“A couple of years ago, the sportswriter Bill Simmons coined the term Tyson Zone. This describes a celebrity whose actions so regularly go over the line that there is nothing they can do or say that would still surprise people. It’s named for the former boxer, Mike Tyson, but also could be applied to individuals such as Dennis Rodman, Randy Quaid, Lindsay Lohan, or Kanye West.
Donald Trump has entered the Tyson Zone.”
Of his request to Putin, I wrote, “In any normal political environment, these comments would be disqualifying for a presidential candidate. But, of course, this presupposes that Trump understands why his comments are so problematic – or even cares.”
Trump is an extreme narcissist and a likely sociopath. He almost certainly has an undiagnosed personality disorder. But unlike many high-functioning narcissists, Trump has no appreciation for or knowledge of basic social norms. As a result, Trump regularly says terrible, awful, highly inappropriate things that no normal person would ever utter in public - and he does not understand why they are wrong and why he shouldn’t say them.
He publicly bragged about the size of his penis. He offered well wishings to a woman charged with running a child sex ring. He accused his political rivals of wiretapping him and of trying to steal the 2020 election. He publicly suggested that one way to fight COVID-19 might be for people to inject bleach. He even mocked a 7-year-old because he still believed in Santa Claus. No healthy person would make these kinds of statements, but Trump regularly did. And it was those unfiltered, batshit crazy, politically incorrect utterances that, more than anything else, solidified his hold over the Republican base.
As a supporter told me at a Trump rally in Las Vegas in the Fall of 2015, “he says what I say when I watch the news on TV.”
What differentiated Trump from every other Republican is that he wasn’t measuring his comments or playing semantic games. He was as racist, misogynistic, and aggrieved as the conservative fever swamp. As crazy as it is to say, Trump’s biggest advantage was that he was genuine - albeit genuinely terrible.
So back in 2016, when Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio wanted to seem racist and xenophobic but not too racist or xenophobic, they’d talk about limiting the flow of new arrivals into the country, getting tough at the border, and banning Muslim refugees from Syria, but still, rhetorically extol the virtues of immigration. Not Trump. He called Mexican immigrants “rapists,” pledged to build a wall on the Southern border, and proposed banning all Muslims from coming to America.
The extremist and inappropriate statements that generated miles of newspaper copy and made regular, healthy Americans shake their head in disbelief is precisely why Republican voters gravitated toward Trump. None of his rivals could get into the same childish fights as Trump. It would never have occurred to any of them to suggest that Trump’s father had participated in the assassination of JFK. They would never mock John McCain for being a POW in Vietnam. Each of them had a little voice in their head that would tell them, “that’s a bridge too far.” But not Trump.
And when they did try to out-Trump, the GOP frontrunner, it never worked because it would always look calculated and artificial. Trump’s indifference to, and unawareness of, basic social niceties was his greatest asset.
Trump’s Heir?
This is why Marjorie Taylor Greene terrifies me. She’s an appalling person who might be the single dumbest member of Congress. And in a body that includes Louie Gohmert and Tommy Tuberville, that is quite an accomplishment. She is charmless, boorish, and appears to believe every conspiracy theory she reads about on Facebook. Like Trump, she is utterly incapable of taking any responsibility for her actions or having empathy for those with whom she disagrees.
For example, last week, she had this to say about mask-wearing, “You know, we can look back at a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany. And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about."
It’s hard to figure out if this is more offensive than stupid. But, of course, this is not the first time Greene has dabbled in anti-Semitism. Who can forget her suggesting that Jewish space lasers started the 2018 California wildfires?
And when criticized for her latest outrage, Greene had the chutzpah to say that just as Jews abhor the Holocaust, they also abhor mask mandates.
To this comment, American Jews replied …
Only a narcissist/sociopath could say something this offensive and inappropriate and refuse to apologize for it … or the last Republican president of the United States.
This morning Greene tweeted this.
Is it worse that she continues to compare getting a vaccine for a deadly virus that has killed more than 3.5 million people worldwide to the systematic murder of 6 million Jews OR that she thinks people are capable of “trusting” their immune systems? It’s a tricky question to answer, but I do know that in an era when more than half of all Republicans think Donald Trump is the “true” president, this kind of insanity is political catnip.
Green is as crazy, clueless, and conspiracy-addled as Trump, and while most humans have a filter between their brain and their mouth, she does not. Like Trump, she has fully entered the Tyson Zone. Ask yourself, is there any outlandish act that would make you say, “Marjorie Taylor Greene has gone off the deep end?”
Does this mean she will be the next Republican nominee for president? Not necessarily. But it would be a mistake to sleep on her appeal.
In the first quarter of 2021, she raised more than $3 million - an astounding fundraising haul that speaks to her growing national profile among Republicans.
Indeed, back in February, after Greene was removed from House committees after comments emerged of her suggesting that the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school was a “false flag” operation, her favorabilities among Republicans increased. Most Republicans still don’t know much about her, but among those who do, more have a positive than negative view. And Greene is precisely the kind of politician Trump would be inclined to endorse and support.
Granted, Greene is a very different politician than Trump. The latter had a long-standing, and for some, a positive reputation as a businessman and reality TV show host. Greene has only been introduced to the general public in the last year, and it’s been unremittingly negative. While Trump can sometimes be charismatic, Greene is singularly charmless. Unless you are a Trump-loving Republican, there’s nothing remotely likable about her. Yet as the GOP moves further and further to the political extremes and makes culture war politics the focal point of their political appeal, Greene, by just being herself and violating every appropriate social and cultural norm, has positioned herself to take full advantage. She might be crazy, but we should have all learned by now that in the Republican Party, that has the potential to be her best asset.
Musical Interlude
This week Bob Dylan turned 80 years old. There’s no limit to the number of videos I could post of the greatest musician of the rock ‘n roll era, but here’s a great place to start - his legendary performance with The Band of “Like a Rolling Stone” at the Manchester Free Trade Hall on May 16, 1966.
My personal favorite Bob Dylan moment came in July 1999 when I saw him perform at the now-shuttered Tramps theater in New York. Below is the whole concert, but if you want to get a gist of how great this night was, start at 1:26:20 for the band’s version of “It Ain't Me, Babe.”
Of course, Dylan’s most significant legacy is that of a songwriter who brought poetry, introspection, and more mature themes to the rock canon. And he influenced generations of musicians. That’s why there’s a healthy debate about the greatest of all Dylan covers. That is a far more extended conversation, but I’ll post a few personal favorites for now.
This version of “Goin’ to Acapulco” from the “I’m Not There” soundtrack by “My Morning Jacket’s” lead singer Jim James and Calexico is simply gorgeous.
From the same album, here’s John Doe performing “Pressing On.”
I know I’ve posted this before, but it’s really, really good - Lou Reed performing “Foot of Pride.”
I saw the Roots perform this cover of “Masters at War” at a Dylan tribute show in 2006, and it completely blew my mind. Here’s the band doing a version of the song at Coachella.
I love Guns N’ Roses's cover of “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.” I will not apologize for holding this arguably dubious position.
I know Dylan is a legend but he can’t sing worth anything.