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Hey, what if the next time Joe Biden visits the House of Representatives, Marjorie Taylor Greene is wearing a pin that says: "Donald Trump Lucks Out." Because he so often seems to, doesn't he? Only last week, a state appeals court cut the disastrous $454 million bond the former president was obliged to post in his civil fraud case, now on appeal, to a "mere" $175 million, potentially staving off financial disaster for him (and a distinct "win" under the circumstances). At the same time, his Truth Social media outfit went public and its value immediately soared to -- yes! -- close to $8 billion (no matter that anyone who followed his history, from his Atlantic City casinos to the Plaza Hotel, knew that such a figure was a futuristic fantasy and a half, even before it almost instantly took a dive). Meanwhile, three of his four criminal cases have been postponed (and postponed again) or delayed in deep doo-doo -- the only exception being his New York state sex scandal case, finally scheduled to begin in mid-April after a mere year of delay. And though it may be hard to believe, despite his unending troubles, he remains ahead of President Biden in most polling when it comes to election 2024, despite a recent poll that indicated a modest "Biden bump" in certain key battleground states.
While The Donald's life is now a chaos of postponed trials, he himself has, as TomDispatch regular Arnold Isaacs makes clear today, become something of a symbol of an all-too-over-armed country entering a state of seemingly eternal chaos. Perhaps the truest symbol of that chaos in our government is, of course, Representative MAGA herself, Marjorie Taylor Greene. She only recently introduced a motion to wipe out the speakership of her own party's House leader, Mike Johnson, after he did the unimaginable, not to say unbearable, and ushered an actual budget through the House of Representatives with the help of the Democrats there.
Talk about the weaponization of American politics! And that's the least of it in a country where, as Isaacs makes clear today, semi-automatic rifles are now being made not just for adults but even for -- no, I'm not kidding you! -- kids. Can you imagine what Dwight D. Eisenhower or John F. Kennedy, if brought back from the dead, might make of this country today? Tom
How About These Names, Marjorie Greene?
(And How About Some Accurate Facts?)
"Say her name!" Marjorie Taylor Greene shouted from the House floor during President Biden's State of the Union Address. The same slogan was on the T-shirt she wore under her red jacket, which had a pin with a picture of the person whose name she was referring to -- a pin she'd also handed out to colleagues before that session as well as to the president as he passed her on his way to the rostrum.
The name was Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student murdered in Georgia, Greene's home state, on February 22nd. The man accused of killing her, Jose Antonio Ibarra, had been identified as an illegal immigrant from Venezuela. Greene's theatrics that night were obviously meant to put a spotlight on Biden's immigration policies and blame him for Riley's death.
Looking back at that moment, a fantasy forms in my mind of someone calling out to Greene (maybe even interrupting a speech of hers) and urging her to say different names: Evelyn Dieckhaus, perhaps, or William Kinney, or Hallie Scruggs.
Those names belonged to three nine-year-olds killed in a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, on March 27, 2023. That day, the shooter carried an AR-15 assault-style rifle, a 9 mm carbine, and a handgun into the school where he fatally shot those three kids, as well as Mike Hill, Katherine Koonce, and Cynthia Peak (respectively a custodian, the head of the school, and a substitute teacher). Six names, then. And speaking of numbers, a question comes to mind: is Marjorie Taylor Greene one of a kind -- or not? Keep reading"
On the day those six people were shot in Nashville, Greene wasted no time turning the tragedy into fodder for a political message attacking President Biden and his record, not on immigration that time but on gun control.
"Joe Biden's gun free school zones have endangered children at schools leaving them as innocent targets of sick horrible disturbed people ever since he worked as a Senator to pass this foolish law," she tweeted less than four hours after the shooting. (The apparent reference was to the Gun-Free Zones Act, passed by Congress in 1990. Biden was in the Senate then but wasn't a sponsor of either that law or a subsequent version passed four years later.) A few sentences later, Greene mentioned the president again: "Gun grabbers like Joe Biden and Democrats should give up their Secret Service protection and put themselves on the same level as our unprotected innocent, precious children at school."
In other tweets that day Greene used the Nashville shooting as ammunition in the culture wars about gender identity. Citing accounts reporting that the shooter was a transgender male, Greene noted that "the female Nashville shooter identified as a man." In separate tweets, she suggested a possible connection between the shooting and "Antifa's plan for violence on the 'Trans Day of Vengeance,'" while asking, "How much hormones like testosterone and medications for mental illness was the transgender Nashville school shooter taking?"
In fact, no evidence has ever surfaced indicating any connection between that shooting and Antifa or the "Day of Vengeance" organizers (who gave that name to a planned nonviolent demonstration in Washington, which was called off before it even happened). Nor has it been confirmed that the shooter was receiving hormone treatments.
Compassion or Exploitation?
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