House Republicans had a chaotic October — ousting Kevin McCarthy as Speaker, fighting bitterly about it for weeks, and then electing Mike Johnson to replace him, seemingly because no know knew him well enough to hate him. The GOP may have unanimously agreed to let a Christian nationalist election denier lead the caucus, but that doesn’t mean the infighting has stopped.
The party is now at odds over Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat whom Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to censure for participating in a Gaza ceasefire protest at the Capitol last month. Greene absurdly called the nonviolent demonstration an “insurrection,” both at the time and in her proposed censure, which 23 Republicans joined Democrats in voting to table. Greene was none too pleased, tweeting a list of her “feckless” colleagues who didn’t support the resolution.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), one of those colleagues, responded by calling the resolution itself “feckless,” noting that it was “deeply flawed and made legally and factually unverified claims, including the claim of leading an ‘insurrection.’”
Greene then attacked Roy for voting to kick her out of the far-right Freedom Caucus, throwing in digs at “CNN wannabe Ken Buck and vaping groping Lauren Boebert.” She also called Tlaib a “terrorist” and accused Roy of “hating Trump.”
“Tell her to go chase so-called Jewish space lasers if she wants to spend time on that sort of thing,” Roy reportedly responded Thursday morning, referencing how she once said she believed wildfires in California were started deliberately by a laser shot from a satellite owned by the Rothschild family, which has long been featured in antisemitic conspiracy theories.
“Oh shut up Colonel Sanders,” Greene tweeted back.
The dysfunction extends well beyond Greene’s grenade throwing.
Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) — who has been criminally indicted for a wide away of alleged fraud — on Wednesday night survived an expulsion attempt brought by members of his own party. “Mr. Santos is a stain on this institution and not fit to serve his constituents in the House of Representatives,” Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.), who brought the resolution, said on the floor. Santos, meanwhile, argued that the move was political before posting — and then deleting — a meme of himself wearing a crown with the text: “If you come for me, you best not miss.”
The House GOP is paralyzed by petty feuds and clearly has no interest in actually governing, but you wouldn’t know it from listening to Speaker Johnson on Thursday morning. “I was just in our Republican conference meeting, and there is such a great feeling of esprit de corps amongst House Republicans,” he told the press. “We’re not only unified, we are energized.”
