Marjorie Taylor Greene slams party and calls Republican men in Congress ‘weak’

The far-right US congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is further distancing herself from her fellow Republicans and accusing men in her party of being “weak”.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Greene expressed her frustrations with Republicans, signaling her further deviation from the political strategies of her party, as the government shutdown beginning 1 October was slated to enter its third week.

Greene has been at odds with some Republican strategies since she campaigned for her seat representing Georgia’s 14th congressional district years back. In her view, the Republicans are not being aggressive enough to push forward their agenda, even as they control Congress and the White House since the beginning of Donald Trump’s second presidency in January.

In the interview with the Post, Greene highlighted her discontent with congressional leaders of her own party, particularly the House speaker, Mike Johnson, amid the ongoing government shutdown.

The Trump loyalist on social media called on the US Senate to do away with the 60-vote filibuster requirement to end the government shutdown in order to push along their spending bill. Johnson apparently told her “they can’t do it” even though “it’s math”, Greene told the Post.

Greene also sided with Democrats in their push to provide healthcare subsidies – a rare move for a Republican – which has been the sticking point at the center of the negotiations between both parties to end the government shutdown.

The Georgia representative in recent months has also been pushing for further transparency related to the convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Along with other Republicans representatives, including Thomas Massie as well as the Trump loyalists Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace, Greene has pushed for the US justice department to release all its files detailing its handling of the Epstein case before his death in 2019.

Despite Johnson and Trump’s opposition to the release of those files, Greene has been prominent in trying to force a vote on the matter.

Greene and her allies had failed to enlist fellow Republicns in the struggle to release the Epstein files, she told the Post, because “they don’t want to get yelled at by the president”.

“They don’t want to get yelled at by Johnson,” she said.

Similarly, Greene said that Republican women were being sidelined by party leadership, a claim other members of the GOP reject. She said that Republican women had been unfairly treated by party leadership, including herself and the New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik. Greene dismissed Johnson and other Republican leaders as “weak” men.

“There’s a lot of weak Republican men, and they’re more afraid of strong Republican women,” Greene remarked. “So they always try to marginalize the strong Republican women that actually want to do something and actually want to achieve.”

Stefanik, a Trump loyalist, was removed from being nominated as ambassador to the United Nations in March after the president announced he needed her more in the House of Representatives. In turn, the national security adviser, Michael Waltz, was made ambassador to the UN, despite a scandal during which he added a reporter to a private chat with high-ranking officials discussing military strikes against Houthis in Yemen.

Stefanik “gets shafted” while Walz “gets rewarded”, Greene said to the Post. “She’s a woman so it was OK to do that to her somehow.”