While some pundits are suggesting McCarthy’s failure to secure an easy election to Speaker is a result of former President Donald Trump’s Influence waning, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA.) credits the former President with keeping support for McCarthy intact.
Talking to reporters on Wednesday (January 4), Greene asserted that Trump deserved credit for preventing support for McCarthy from eroding.
Nineteen Republicans opposed McCarthy in the first two Speaker votes on Tuesday (January 3); by the third vote, that figure had increased by one to 20, and in the first two votes on Wednesday, another Republican lawmaker had joined, bringing the total dissenting figure to 21.
Greene believes that figure would have been higher if it wasn’t for Trump’s public support of McCarthy. Earlier Wednesday, Trump released a statement urging Republicans to rally behind McCarthy and have him elected Speaker.
Greene touted that statement as the reason a “majority” of Republicans were still backing McCarthy, describing it as a “big credit” to the former President. Her comments came after McCarthy failed to secure the vote for Speaker for a fifth time.
She told reporters that her view was how to “read” the struggle to elect McCarthy despite Trump’s vocal support.
The Georgia Republican’s support for McCarthy sharply contrasts her opposition to the former House Minority Leader.
In the last Congress, Greene vowed not to support McCarthy. But that changed following the midterm elections and the GOP’s lackluster performance, prompting the Georgia Republican to become one of McCarthy’s strongest cheerleaders.
Her cheerleading for McCarthy has even caused her to direct criticism toward some of the very same conservative group she was once part of, saying her dissenting colleagues should “take the wins that they have,” adding that she found the inability to elect a Speaker “embarrassing.”
