International- Marjorie Taylor Greene says Kevin McCarthy should give her more power to please the GOP base.
- She suggested that she should be given "a lot of leeway" by McCarthy, too.
Far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene told The New York Times that if Rep. Kevin McCarthy becomes House Speaker, there's one thing he can do to keep the GOP base happy: give her more power and leeway.
In an interview published Monday, Greene told The Times that if Republicans were to take control of Congress in 2022, McCarthy, as speaker of the House, should get used to her "aggressive" approach to going after President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.
"I think that to be the best speaker of the House and to please the base, he's going to give me a lot of power and a lot of leeway," Greene said.
"And if he doesn't, they're going to be very unhappy about it," she added, referring to the GOP's supporters. "I think that's the best way to read that. And that's not in any way a threat at all. I just think that's reality."
McCarthy, the current House minority leader, is angling to take House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's job if the GOP wins the congressional midterms. It's unclear if McCarthy has sufficient support from the rest of the party to secure the gig as Speaker, considering the skepticism he still faces from within the GOP's center-right ranks, and the MAGA wing's disapproval of him.
Rep. Matt Gaetz in August floated the idea that Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan could be McCarthy's replacement. His GOP colleague, Rep. Lauren Boebert, slammed McCarthy in August and suggested that the GOP should not tolerate a speaker "that works with Democrats more than Republicans." Fox News host Tucker Carlson in April called McCarthy a "puppet of the Democratic Party" who "in private, sounds like an MSNBC contributor."
In November, Greene said she did not think McCarthy had the votes to be the speaker.
"I can't respect leadership that doesn't hold people accountable, yet allows people like me, Paul Gosar, to be constantly trampled on and abused, and then will throw us under the bus at the first given chance. I'm really sick of it," Greene said during a November episode of Gaetz's "Firebrand" podcast.
This was after both Greene and Gosar were stripped of their committee assignments. Gosar was punished in November for tweeting a violent anime video that depicted him killing Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Democratic lawmakers in February 2021 accused Greene of endorsing violence against her colleagues and supporting right-wing fringe conspiracy theories. Greene objected to bring stripped of these assignments, saying at the time that she was a "very regular American" who just "stumbled across" the QAnon conspiracy theory, per NPR.
For his part, McCarthy has remained fairly conciliatory to Greene, even pledging in March to give both her and Gosar committee assignments again if the GOP seizes power in the House again.
Representatives for McCarthy did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.