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On Saturday, while much of America was enjoying yet another semi-post-pandemic summer weekend, Donald J. Trump held his first rally since losing a second term as president. He’s been lying low the last six months, which is to say he’s been living, it seems, alone in various resorts, peddling strangers with unhinged tales of a “stolen” election. But don’t call it a comeback. Indeed, arguably the closest thing to a big breakout wasn’t from him but one of his hype people, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who spent part of her time at the mic railing against her arch-nemesis in Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
At the rally, in Wellington, Ohio — which was ostensibly to support White House aide-turned-representative hopeful Max Miller, who’s running against incumbent Anthony Gonzalez — Greene fell back on some good old fashioned Republican red meat. “I didn’t go to Washington, DC to make friends,” she said in reference to her being booted from committee assignment after another based on her dangerous rhetoric, which involved conspiracy theories and even threatening language. Then she turned her ire towards AOC, whom she used to harass before they became colleagues.
Marjorie Taylor Greene calls AOC a little communist and says locking her up is a good idea. She also says AOC isn’t an American pic.twitter.com/aCT1JTtC69
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 26, 2021
Greene called the representative “the little communist from New York City.” When the crowd launched into a kneejerk “love ‘er up” — although it’s not clear how Greene, much less Trump, can throw a colleague in jail — she joined in. “Yeah, lock her up, too. That’s a good idea.” She then questioned her patriotic bona fides, or at least did some dog whistling. “She’s not an American. She really doesn’t embrace our American ways.”
She then launched into a diatribe about the Green New Deal, which she confessed to not reading.
Greene’s comments soon came to the attention of its target, who took the time to clap back.
First of all, I’m taller than her https://t.co/H6rXG66GJk
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 27, 2021
“First of all, I’m taller than her,” Ocasio-Cortez joked. For the record, the New York congresswoman is 5’4”, and Greene is a mere inch shorter. Still, the point remains. And besides, like she said, that’s just for starters.
Like a lot of Republicans, Greene knew what to say to get them worked up. She doesn’t do so well, though, when asked by reporters to give even a shred of evidence for her loony claims, as CNN’s Jim Acosta recently found out.
