McCarthy ended up being censured by his Senate colleagues and ostracized by his party. McCarthy’s chief counsel was Roy Cohn, Donald Trump’s future mentor.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene certainly deserves the same fate, but has that moment come yet?
Her cruelty and recklessness has been flagrantly displayed this week. On Sunday, she posted this comment on X, formerly known as Twitter: “It’s antisemitic to make Israeli aid contingent on funding Ukrainian Nazis. These should be separate bills.”
The Georgia representative, who has pulled out all stops to block desperately needed U.S. military aid to Ukraine at Trump’s behest, simply regurgitated the talking points Russian President Vladimir Putin used to justify his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, whose president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish.
But with a mixture of righteous outrage and sarcastic humor, Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida has stood up and called out Greene for her lack of any sense of decency.
At a House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday, Greene questioned Yale Professor Timothy Snyder, an expert on the Holocaust and Ukrainian history, making false claims that Nazism was rampant in Ukraine. Snyder schooled Greene, telling her that “if there is anyone who is sincerely concerned about halting fascism or racism, you would wish to halt Russia,” The Hill reported.
And then Moskowitz then rebuked Greene for her malicious insinuations about Ukraine:
“Now I want to address something else that went on in this committee. By another member and I say this as someone whose grandparents escaped the Holocaust.”
“So my grandmother was part of the Kindertransport out of Germany. Her parents were killed in Auschwitz. My grandfather, her husband, escaped Poland from the pogroms. You know, the idea that we pretend that behavior is acceptable and regular. There are no concentration camps in Ukraine. They’re not taking babies and shooting them in the air because they’re Jewish. There’s no gas chambers. There’s no ovens. They’re not railing people in. They’re not ripping gold out of people’s mouth. They’re not taking stuff out of their home. They’re not trying to erase a people, the Ukrainians.”
And he concluded:
”Stop bringing up Nazis and Hitler. The only people who know about Nazis and Hitler are the 10 million people and their families who lost their loved ones. Generations of people who were wiped out. It is enough of this disgusting behavior using Nazis as propaganda. You want to talk about Nazis? Get yourself over to the Holocaust Museum, you go see what Nazis did. It’s despicable that we use that and we allow it, and we sit here like somehow it’s regular.”
Another Florida Democrat, Rep. Maxwell Frost, told Greene that it was hypocritical for her to disavow white supremacy when she spoke at a February 2022 event where neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes said he has no problem with comparing Putin with Adolf Hitler.
“It’s interesting to hear my colleague just now talk about disavowing white supremacists, when in 2022 she spoke at an event led by white supremacists and white nationalist Nick Fuentes,” Frost said. “And when asked about it, doubled down on it and said, ‘We’re going to focus on people, not labels.’ So get out of here with that damn hypocrisy.”
But that chastening didn’t stop Greene from filing a series of frivolous amendments to the $61 billion Ukraine aid bill that is expected to come up for a vote in the House on Saturday.
The Hill wrote:
Greene also submitted a series of amendments to the Ukraine supplemental bill, including one that says any member who votes for the bill “shall be required to conscript in the Ukrainian military.”
Other amendments Greene filed similarly embraced false claims often championed by Putin and pro-Russia outlets. She introduced amendments that prohibit funding until Ukraine “holds free and fair elections,” “stops persecuting Christians,” “closes all bio-laboratories,” “bans abortion” and “turns over all information related to Hunter Biden and Burisma,” among others.
Greene also introduced an amendment that directs the president to withdraw the U.S. from NATO and prohibits funding for NATO troops in Ukraine.
And then for good measure, she threw in an amendment to the $26.4 billion Israel aid bill that proposed that funding be allocated to “the development of space laser technology on the southwest border.” That recalled her antisemitic remarks about “Jewish space lasers” setting off wildfires in California.
So Moskowitz responded with humor by offering his own amendments to the Ukraine aid bill that trolled Greene’s embrace of pro-Russia propaganda.
His first amendment called for Greene to be appointed “Vladimir Putin’s Special Envoy to the United States Congress.”
His amendment read:
Whereas Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14) has repeatedly attempted to block aid to Ukraine, empowering Vladimir Putin’s unlawful violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity. Whereas Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14) has reposted information from the Strategic Culture Foundation, a Russian based disinformation and propaganda channel that has been sanctioned by OFAC. It is the sense of Congress that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14) should be appointed Vladimir Putin’s Special Envoy to the United States Congress.
Moskowitz’s second amendment proposed renaming Greene’s office in the Cannon House Office Building as the “Neville Chamberlain Room”—a reference to the British prime minister known for his appeasement policy who promised “peace for our time” after signing a non-aggression pact with Hitler in Munich in January 1938 that allowed Germany to occupy part of Czechoslovakia.
And that ties in to comments made by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in a letter to colleagues on Monday making the case for sending more aid to Ukraine: “This is a Churchill or Chamberlain moment.” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McFaul, a leading Republican supporter of aid to Ukraine, made a similar Chamberlain-Churchill analogy.
Churchill replaced Chamberlain as prime minister on May 13, 1940, during Britain’s “darkest hour” in World War II when it stood alone against the Nazi onslaught. Just two weeks later, Churchill oversaw the start of the evacuation of 338,000 British and French troops from the port of Dunkirk.
The Washington Post described how Greene began the current session of Congress “as an unlikely ally” of Rep. Kevin McCarthy in his bid for the speakership, going from “pariah to establishment loyalist” and given choice committee assignments.
But now Greene is threatening to file a motion to oust Speaker Mike Johnson if the House passes the Ukraine aid bill. And that threat has caused infighting within the ranks of the House GOP caucus since Johnson’s removal would lead to another chaotic attempt to choose a replacement just months before the November election.
Moskowitz told CNN that he’s even ready to vote to keep Johnson as speaker should Greene call a motion to vacate the speakership if Jeffries depending on what Jeffries decides to do.
“There is not a circumstance where I sit in the people’s House and allow Marjorie Taylor Greene to throw the world into chaos and to embolden China, to embolden Russia by letting her garbage stop us from standing by our allies,” Moskowitz said in an interview on CNN.
And asked what he thinks is going on with Greene, Moskowitz replied:
“I don’t think there’s a psychologist in the world who knows what’s going on with Marjorie Taylor Greene. ... It’s just out of control and what’s getting frustrating for me is that her Republican colleagues who know this stuff is lunacy sit there like “Oh this is just another normal day.’ No, we’ve got to stop this nonsense.”