Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
I’m absolutely double-positive it won’t surprise you to learn that America’s favorite poster-person for bluster, blowhardiness and bong-bouncy-bunk went on Fox News on Sunday and made a threat. Amazingly, she didn’t threaten to expose alleged corruption by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by quoting a Russian think-tank bot-factory known as Strategic Culture Foundation, as she did last November. Rather, the Congressperson from North Georgia made her eleventy-zillionth threat to oust the Speaker of the House from her own party, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), using the Motion to Vacate she filed last month. She told Fox viewers she wanted to return to her House district to “listen to voters” before acting, however.
MTM is upset with Speaker Johnson because he engineered the passage of a $91 billion supplemental aid package that included $61 billion in aid to Ukraine by teaming up with Democrats to get it passed, thus violating the Republican Party’s Thirteenth Commandment, don’t do anything Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin don’t tell you to do. The Mouth from the South has been all talk and no action when it comes to the Motion to Vacate she filed in late March.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), the Congressman from the Bamboo Fiber Ballot state, joined Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie in sponsoring The Mouth’s motion to rid the Republican conference of its Speaker. Some Republican allies of Speaker Johnson have offered to put forth a change in the rule that allows a single member to force a vote to vacate the speakership, but Johnson has brushed off the offer, seeming to challenge the Mouth to go ahead with her threat. She hasn’t taken him up on it, however.
With three Republican sponsors, the Motion to Vacate the Speakership will pass if every Democrat votes to join them, giving Republicans the rare opportunity to throw the House of Representatives into chaos for the third time in two years.
House Democratic leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) is unlikely to allow that to happen, however, and is reportedly rubbing his hands together with glee as he calculates what price he will exact from puppet Speaker Johnson in the coming weeks and months. With the word “bipartisan” having returned to the Washington D.C. lexicon thanks to Marjorie Taylor Mouth, anything could happen.
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.
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Right-Wing Media Spurred Racist Death Threats Against Election Workers
Wandra "Shaye" Moss
Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a former Georgia election worker, testified today about the harassment and threats she received after she was targeted in a right-wing media-driven conspiracy theory about Democrats stealing the 2020 presidential election in the state. Moss spoke to the January 6 congressional committee today about the racist threats against her which followed the widespread coverage.
Moss said she wanted to work in election administration because her grandmother emphasized that voting was not always a right that Black people had in the United States. Due to the threats and harassment she received, she's been forced to leave her job.
Moss also detailed a break-in at her grandmother’s house in which people “knocked on her door” and “just started pushing their way through, claiming that they were coming in to make a citizen’s arrest.” The committee also played footage from the testimony that her mother and fellow election worker, Ruby Freeman, gave prior to the hearing, in which she described how her life had been turned upside down by right-wing conspiracy theories.
Moss and Freeman were targeted following the release of footage that the Trump campaign claimed provided evidence of voter fraud. The footage provoked a false conspiracy theory that the Georgia poll workers unloaded ballots from a concealed suitcase in order to sway the election results. The conspiracy theory has been repeatedly debunked. By the beginning of January, Freeman had evacuated her home after the FBI concluded she was no longer safe in the days preceding January 6.
Moss and Freeman have sued The Gateway Pundit and One America News Network for their coverage of the footage that spurred the false conspiracy theory. OAN was later dismissed from the suit. Fox News and other right-wing outlets repeatedly covered the footage of Moss and Freeman, though the network never explicitly named the two workers.
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.