Joe Biden’s New Focus on Marjorie Taylor Greene
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Joe Biden Draws Laughs With Marjorie Taylor Greene Jibe
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Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has officially built a national profile prominent enough to capture the attention of President Joe Biden.
Greene emerged as an up-and-coming MAGA star during her first term in Congress and her role in helping Representative Kevin McCarthy secure the speakership helped increase her power in the GOP after her reelection. Serving on two very powerful committees, Greene appeals to a certain sector of the GOP and Biden focusing in on her may be part of his 2024 strategy.
“This is definitely about 2024, and it’s two-fold: it gets the base motivated because [Greene] is an enemy to the base,” Democratic strategist Michael Gordon told Newsweek. He said it will also help Biden in the general election because “Greene appeals to a narrow swath of right-wing voters and turns off moderate, swing voters.”
So, while the Republican 2024 nominee will need to placate Greene, “Biden can go after her and appeal to the center in the process.”
For the first 18 months of his presidency, Biden rarely, if ever, mentioned Greene by name. It wasn’t until August 2022 that he ever mentioned Greene, and in recent months, Biden has ramped up his mentions of the Republican congresswoman.
Speaking at a virtual Democratic National Committee (DNC) event on August 3, Biden asked, “Do you want to put Social Security, something people have paid for every paycheck their entire life, in the hands of Ted Cruz and Marjorie Taylor Greene every five years?”—a question the president asked again just three and a half weeks later at another DNC rally.
Since November, Biden has referred to Greene by name 10 times, a Newsweek analysis found.
Most recently, the president teased the Georgia Republican for driving “a lot of Republicans…our way” during a March 1 House Democratic Caucus conference.
“Isn’t she amazing?” Biden joked.
When the president issued his first veto last week, he used the opportunity to knock Greene, saying the GOP-led bill—which sought to overturn an investment rule that allows retirement fund managers to consider the impact of environmental and social goals when picking investments—would “risk” retirement savings just because it considered “risk factors MAGA House Republicans don’t like.”
“Your plan manager should be able to protect your hard-earned savings—whether Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene likes it or not,” Biden tweeted on March 20.
Although most of the comments Biden has made about Greene have been at fundraising events, her name has also slipped into his remarks about affordable healthcare and student loan forgiveness. More than once, Biden has used Greene’s outburst at this year’s State of the Union to prove his argument that GOP lawmakers were prepared to end programs like Social Security. He’s also repeatedly pointed to the $180,000 business loans that Greene and her husband had forgiven by the Paycheck Protection Program.
Greene, a staunch Trump ally, has built a reputation for her far-right positions and drawn widespread criticism over her previous promotion of conspiracy theories, like QAnon. Despite being a conservative firebrand, she broke with other Freedom Caucus members in January to support McCarthy’s bid for the speakership, while her colleagues remained firmly opposed throughout 14 rounds of voting.
Greene, who challenged Biden’s 2020 victory, has also been one of his most vocal critics in Congress. She filed articles of impeachment against him in the days after his inauguration and heckled him during his State of the Union address this year, calling him a “liar.”
Once considered a fringe party member, McCarthy catapulted Greene into becoming the “poster child of the Republican Party” with powerful positions on the Oversight and Homeland Security Committees, according to political consultant Michael Hopkins. Her newfound influence in the Republican party gives Biden a “good strategy” to call her out by name and set her up as a “proxy for how extreme the Republicans have become,” Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen told Newsweek.
Biden has signaled that he prepares to run in the next election, although he has not yet officially announced his candidacy. Still, as the sitting president, every day is considered part of his campaign if he wants to win in 2024.
A number of politicos who spoke to Newsweek described calling out Greene as an effective playbook for the president, who could advance his causes by portraying Greene as the face of the GOP. By reminding voters who McCarthy has rewarded with committee assignments, and the values Greene has made her platform, Biden could make a case about his Republican colleagues without doing anything more than quoting his rivals.
“If Republicans want to enable MTG then President Biden would be well served to give her the spotlight that she so desperately wants,” Democratic strategist Michael Gordon said. “Every time she opens her mouth, she raises Biden’s re-elections chances.”
During the midterms, far-right incumbents struggled to win re-election and far-right political newcomers failed to ride into office on the same America First platform Greene has used.
Former Representative Madison Cawthorn lost in North Carolina’s Republican primaries, while Representative Lauren Boebert—who represents a Colorado district that has long been a Republican stronghold—ended up in a contest so close that it triggered an automatic recount. At the same time, Trump-endorsed GOP candidates like Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, Blake Masters of Arizona and Bo Hines of North Carolina lost their respective races.
Democratic strategist Michael Stratton told Newsweek that if there is any lesson to be learned from the 2022 midterms, it’s that Americans aren’t ready to embrace extreme political views, like the ones Greene has promoted. He said that as long as Biden continues to resurface Greene’s views, he could convince the public that she is not what most people believe to be the “face of American democracy.”
“The Republicans we’re hoping that after a few months, women would forget about Roe, but women did not forget about Roe,” Stratton said. “They didn’t forget about it in Kentucky, they didn’t forget about it in Kansas and they didn’t forget about it everywhere else. As a result, Democrats held everyone in the House and increased in the Senate.”
“It’s pretty clear that the extreme views of the Republican Party that has manifested itself—particularly in Congress—is not the face of America that people like,” he added.
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