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Leaked text messages between GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida appear to indicate that she is attempting to put some distance between herself and some members of the House Freedom Caucus.
Greene defended her conservative bona fides after voting for recent legislation that raised the debt ceiling and curbed some spending in an exchange with Gaetz.
“I have almost the same identical voting record as Thomas Massie, the most fiscally conservative member of Congress. And I voted with him on this bill,” Greene said of her GOP colleague from Kentucky.
She then followed up that text by responding to “War Room” podcast host and former Trump administration adviser Steve Bannon, who has called for a “REAL MAGA” candidate to challenge Greene in her next primary.
“And Bannon, who was senior counsel to Trump in the WH and responsible for the first debt ceiling increase bc Bannon is reckless and nowhere near fiscally responsible, is now telling everyone I should be primaried,” she continued, according to The Daily Beast.
She added that she recently received a “standing ovation” after an “extremely successful” event in Cobb County, Ga., which is in her congressional district, before firing off another text.
“Steve, [conservative activist Laura] Loomer, and any other POS attacking me will not beat me,” Greene told Gaetz. “Because of that people have been reaching out to me because they don’t like what Steve is doing to me… I’m at a place in my life where removing toxic and bad people out of my life makes me very happy.”
A number of House conservatives who are angry about the passage of a debt ceiling bill last week they don’t believe cuts spending nearly enough have threatened to topple Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
“The hard-fought deal pleased few, but lawmakers assessed it was better than the alternative — a devastating economic upheaval if Congress failed to act,” The Associated Press reported, adding that Republicans and Democrats complained about elements of the measure.
According to reports, some spending was capped while other Republican priorities were included in the measure as well. Extreme left-wing Democrats, meanwhile, were angry over the fact that President Joe Biden agreed to any spending cuts at all and was imploring him to hold out longer.
The AP added:
McCarthy insisted his party was working to “give America hope” as he launched into a late evening speech extolling the bill’s budget cuts, which he said were needed to curb Washington’s “runaway spending.” But amid discontent from Republicans who said the spending restrictions did not go far enough, McCarthy said it is only a “first step.”
Earlier, Biden expressed optimism that the agreement he negotiated with McCarthy to lift the nation’s borrowing limit would pass the chamber and avoid an economically disastrous default on America’s debts. The president departed Washington for Colorado, where he is scheduled to deliver the commencement address Thursday at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
“God willing by the time I land, Congress will have acted, the House will have acted, and we’ll be one step closer,” he said.
Not quite; the voting in the House began about 90 minutes after Biden arrived at the academy. The final tally was 314-117 for passage, and the measure now goes to the Senate, where passage is expected by the end of the week.
All told, however, McCarthy’s future as Speaker may be in jeopardy.
“I think he should be concerned” about a motion to vacate the chair, Rep. Kin Buck told CNN’s Jim Sciutto on Wednesday.
“I’m not suggesting the votes are there to remove the speaker, but the speaker promised that we would operate at 2022 appropriations levels when he got the support to be the speaker. He’s now changed that to 2023 levels plus one percent,” Buck added, according to The Daily Caller.
