“GOP Rep. Struggles to Defend Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Homeland Security Committee Post When Confronted on Her 9/11 Trutherism.
“Look, this is 2018. I will tell you she has matured,” said McCaul. “I think she realizes she doesn’t know everything, and she wants to learn and become I think more of a team player. I think it’s incumbent upon …
“GOP Rep. Struggles to Defend Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Homeland Security Committee Post When Confronted on Her 9/11 Trutherism.
“Look, this is 2018. I will tell you she has matured,” said McCaul. “I think she realizes she doesn’t know everything, and she wants to learn and become I think more of a team player. I think it’s incumbent upon more senior members to try to — she’s a member of Congress — bring her in and try to educate her that these theories that she has are not accurate.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene? Team player? This is BS. MTG got into politics to be famous, to be on NewsMax, OANN, Fox, etc., and to rub shoulders with Trump and affluent far right deplorables. This is why she's on the road far more often than she's in her district. Her whole career depends on grandstanding, and maturing doesn't factor into her personal equation.
I disagree. I think she has evolved, or more specifically that her ambitions have evolved.
This whole speaker fight had her making a transition from the bomb-throwing performative futility wing to the leadership wing. It speaks of ambition.
It's not a positive evolution, though. She's just trying to smokescreen her days of harassing high school students and ranting about the Jews because there may be a future veep spot or even a presidential run in the works if she can successfully triangulate between MAGA and the Chamber of Commerce wing.
Hi, Josh. She's a dysfunctional personality, and while such people may be adept at obtaining power, using that power effectively is another story. To date, I see little evidence she cares about actual policy, unless one considers trolling a policy.
I agree pretty much entirely. One of the reasons she's become a leading star in the movement is that her narcissism is akin to Trump's. She has no particular set of fixed principles, but she's good at mirroring what a particular subset of the population wants to shout about.
The photo of her incompetently handling a Barret rifle sums her up nicely. I, the lefty that she was trying to trigger, saw an idiot doing something dumb. But the base saw a straight talkin' gun hottie that made dudes like me cry so hard we spilled our soy lattes. My take didn't matter to her in the slightest, but hitting that sweet spot with the base is everything.
Hi, Josh. I think the whole deal about "owning the libs" or "triggering the libs" is sorta funny. I consider myself conservative in a small c way. When I look at Greene, Boebert, Gaetz, or any of these other assclowns, all I can see are a bunch of people who've never been held accountable for any harm they've caused in their lives. As such, they've been emboldened. But they're not intelligent. They're not qualified for the offices they hold. But they do reflect the moral poverty of their supporters. When Greene tries to trigger someone like me or you, I just roll my eyes because she's so transparent.
Of course, she's also very dangerous, and we can't ever forget that. But when I look at the House GOP, I actually see an opportunity. It's a volatile mix of characters, and McCarthy's not going to be able to lead them. If I were Hakeem Jeffries, I'd be asking myself how I can get them to turn against each other every day.
One thing I've been pondering lately is just how painfully obsolete the 'own the libs' mindset has become these days.
They had their heyday back in 2015-2018, because their aggressive transgression was shocking in how it so quickly mainstreamed in the party. The upset was real simply because grown-ass adults were doing stupid juvenile things and being rewarded for it. The culmination of that was the first half of Trump's term, where he achieved one of the two actual accomplishments of his term in political terms- Paul Ryan got his precious deficit-exploding tax cut. (The other major accomplishment later being McConnell's maneuvering paying off in a badly-imbalanced SCOTUS that's entirely out of step with the popular majority.)
But it's 2023 and 'own the libs' doesn't come close to actually owning the libs anymore. Online libs evolved and developed their own insulation against the noise machine and mostly learned the futility of bothering to engage with dedicated trolls.
Which leaves them in a conundrum, because by and large the MTG/Boebert/Gaetz wing don't actually have anything else to offer. They weren't elected to actually accomplish anything of substance, and they aren't the kind of people who really know how to do that. Nor do they have any particular substantive vision.
So really in political terms they're chucking grenades at vacant lots or each other because that's basically all they have. They do still represent an actual danger, of course, because idiots with guns still have guns. But what they're up against at this point is social inertia. Even if most people aren't particularly enthusiastic about the present system, they don't hate it to the extent that they're willing to suffer the chaos and deprivations that would accompany burning it down.
That's what gets us moments like the Red Trickle election.
And yeah, spot on with just how much Jeffries is going to be able to monkeywrench the House next year. Biden would be sitting pretty right now if he apparently wasn't so damn criminally stupid about his document control.
They've found classified documents in Pence's home recently as well. I suspect every former president & VP has some lying around, it's just that the authorities hadn't been paying attention until Trump's actions. More evidence that our overly-convoluted classification system is overdue for a rehaul.
We can spend all day going back and forth. That would be fun. But for now, I'll deal with this point.
"Biden would be sitting pretty right now if he apparently wasn't so damn criminally stupid about his document control."
Yeah, that was dumb. I'm not sure what happened there, but it's dumb. I've been in DoD-adjacent world for all of my career. Documents like that are supposed to have a cover sheet with the overall classification, a back sheet, the classification authority, declassification date, and the classification level of every page and every paragraph, and so on. I'm not sure how a properly marked document ends up in personal files, the key words being "properly marked".
On the other hand, intent matters. Data spills, for example, happen more often that you think. Sometimes someone unfamiliar with the classification guide for their particular program will send classified information over an unclassified network, and there are protocols to deal with that. If it were intentional, that person would be fired and lose their clearance. What Biden has going for him is as soon as he knew there was an issue, he allowed the process to recover those documents to take place without interference, and that's a big deal. The chips will fall where they fall. I don't think this will preclude the prosecution of Trump.
Back to work. Take care, Josh, and good talking to you.
Not only that. It's very possible, and this doesn't mean he is not responsible, that he assumed after the documents were viewed for whatever reason, that someone in his staff would call the National Archives and have them pick them up. The fact that the President wasn't aware that these documents had not been returned and that he's honest enough to bring it to everyone's attention.
That is remarkable because the President has the right to view these documents.
He could have told his lawyer to bring them to the White House. At that point he could notify the National Archives to come and pick them up. There would been no mishandling of classified documents.
Lord, how many times have we heard this from cowardly and transactional GOP pols? Let Trump blow off steam on the election, of course he'll accept his loss and leave office, don't take him literally, people (Republicans) can be redeemed even when they don't admit wrongdoing or show repentance.
This is all nonsense. This is a party who ran Herschel Walker and George Santos just because they needed a body in those seats regardless of their utter unfitness to serve. They know Greene is not fit, they just do not care.
I never thought I'd live to see Republicans voting for 9/11 Truthers, and party leadership putting them into important positions. No sense of shame. Weren't they the party who forced us into war over 9/11? And rammed through lots of Homeland Security laws that make the average person feel scared and uncomfortable? And that was all for nothing, huh?
It's important to remember the past doesn't exist for these people. Nor does the future. They know they can't defend what they've previously advocated for. There's only now, and that's where the fight has to occur. Unfortunately, our media is a mixture of credulous and incompetent.
Most of the 9/11 Truthers I know are conservatives, not liberals. I grew up in Queens and was 15 when 9/11 happen. It started out as the first liberal conspiracy theory I came into contact with in my life, with most adherents being anti-Bush liberals. Michael Moore even delves into this territory a bit in "Fahrenheit 9/11" when discussing the Carlyle Group and Bush's responses to Dick Clark's warnings about Bin Laden being "determined" to strike the US. I put the turn from that particular conspiracy being a left-wing one to a right-wing one around 2008 at the end of the Bush 43 presidency. By then, the war in Iraq had deteriorated after we never found WMDs in Iraq, and Dick Cheney's KBR was making a killing on no-bid government contracts. For GOP grass roots voters who were serving in the wars, this was a turning point for them and they saw the writing on the wall. The financial crisis later that year and the TARP bailouts exacerbated that move away from the GOP elites.
The only thing tethering the proto-MAGA base to their elites who kept using them as recycled cannon fodder in the war on terror was the "threat" of America's first black president. They got into a lot of conspiracy theories from there--mostly via Alex Jones and the new "alt-media" like Breitbart, Ron Paul's popularity within the grass roots base skyrocketed, and when Romney lost to Obama in 2012, the proto-MAGA base finally turned on their elites and by 2016 they chose Trump as the form of their destructor to take on the "globalist government." Now it's mostly a right-wing conspiracy because if you believe in "globalist governments" then you probably think that 9/11 was an inside job organized by "globalists" to strengthen their hold over governments and the hold that those governments have over the economy.
Point being: MAGA sees the Bush dynasty as being "the other side of the same coin" with the powerful liberals who they think run "globalist governments," so their radicalism against both "the coin" and the globalism it controls doesn't see color in political parties, it sees wealth and power backing both sides and THAT is their enemy. The "old money" power players who control everything in government, economics, and foreign policy. That's why they see conspiracy theorists as their friends and conservative old money ivy league grads as imposters. That's why they chose Trump over Rubio or Cruz in 2015. He was THEIR conspiracy theorist in chief. He saw things the way they did. The whole "I gave money to both dems and republicans all these years because I KNOW the system is rigged" had a message that really resonated with the MAGA base because it is true.
There are very clear boundaries to MAGA and they are policed (for the most part). People that do not toe the line get "canceled."
This is par for the course with most strong in/out group structures. It isn't that the boundaries make sense or are true, or are consistent across the spectrum--it is that they exist and are simple to understand. Very much in/out, good/bad what zero tolerance or allowance for context or thought.
Lots of code words and slogans that mean something specific to the in group in comparison to what they mean to the out group. Things get compacted and simplified and sloganized.
The "leadership" (which does no actual leading) must toe the line or get purged. Same thing with the rank and file. It is almost religious in function and behavior... and given time it tends to eat itself, barring some form of control being imposed.
I do not see anyone in a position (currently) to impose that control--not in the GoP and not in the MAGA movement.
So, by that way of thinking, no one evolves. No more lifelong learning. No changes of heart, changes of mind. Perhaps you believe in predestination too. Lock 'em up, throwaway the key. Or, permanent public banishment, otherwise known as cancellation. Greene is changing. I can't say for better or worse, but changing. Looks like she lost some weight, addressed her complexion, dumped a husband, attached herself to McCarthy, and disagreed with Boebert on something, or another. It's a start. Encourage her to change more -- come back to humanity, Greene, all can be forgiven. Where there is life, there is hope.
I realize your comment was directed to Paul, but I'd like to address it.
She posted an hour ago on Twitter that "Antifa are the ground troops for the Democrat Party". You may be right in the sense that people *can* evolve. But why would MTG choose to? She's relevant now. She's got Kevin McCarthy's gonads in her purse. Most of all, she's a right wing celebrity.
She has shown us every day who and what she is. Because her career depends on it, She Will Not Change.
Yup. And let's be honest: she never had to mature because her father was very wealthy and that can skew the way one looks at life. So what we see is what we get.
“GOP Rep. Struggles to Defend Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Homeland Security Committee Post When Confronted on Her 9/11 Trutherism.
“Look, this is 2018. I will tell you she has matured,” said McCaul. “I think she realizes she doesn’t know everything, and she wants to learn and become I think more of a team player. I think it’s incumbent upon more senior members to try to — she’s a member of Congress — bring her in and try to educate her that these theories that she has are not accurate.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene? Team player? This is BS. MTG got into politics to be famous, to be on NewsMax, OANN, Fox, etc., and to rub shoulders with Trump and affluent far right deplorables. This is why she's on the road far more often than she's in her district. Her whole career depends on grandstanding, and maturing doesn't factor into her personal equation.
I disagree. I think she has evolved, or more specifically that her ambitions have evolved.
This whole speaker fight had her making a transition from the bomb-throwing performative futility wing to the leadership wing. It speaks of ambition.
It's not a positive evolution, though. She's just trying to smokescreen her days of harassing high school students and ranting about the Jews because there may be a future veep spot or even a presidential run in the works if she can successfully triangulate between MAGA and the Chamber of Commerce wing.
Dear God!
Yeah it's an ugly thought.
I don't give her any real chance of success, but even the thought is a scary one.
Hi, Josh. She's a dysfunctional personality, and while such people may be adept at obtaining power, using that power effectively is another story. To date, I see little evidence she cares about actual policy, unless one considers trolling a policy.
Hi Tim!
I agree pretty much entirely. One of the reasons she's become a leading star in the movement is that her narcissism is akin to Trump's. She has no particular set of fixed principles, but she's good at mirroring what a particular subset of the population wants to shout about.
The photo of her incompetently handling a Barret rifle sums her up nicely. I, the lefty that she was trying to trigger, saw an idiot doing something dumb. But the base saw a straight talkin' gun hottie that made dudes like me cry so hard we spilled our soy lattes. My take didn't matter to her in the slightest, but hitting that sweet spot with the base is everything.
Hi, Josh. I think the whole deal about "owning the libs" or "triggering the libs" is sorta funny. I consider myself conservative in a small c way. When I look at Greene, Boebert, Gaetz, or any of these other assclowns, all I can see are a bunch of people who've never been held accountable for any harm they've caused in their lives. As such, they've been emboldened. But they're not intelligent. They're not qualified for the offices they hold. But they do reflect the moral poverty of their supporters. When Greene tries to trigger someone like me or you, I just roll my eyes because she's so transparent.
Of course, she's also very dangerous, and we can't ever forget that. But when I look at the House GOP, I actually see an opportunity. It's a volatile mix of characters, and McCarthy's not going to be able to lead them. If I were Hakeem Jeffries, I'd be asking myself how I can get them to turn against each other every day.
One thing I've been pondering lately is just how painfully obsolete the 'own the libs' mindset has become these days.
They had their heyday back in 2015-2018, because their aggressive transgression was shocking in how it so quickly mainstreamed in the party. The upset was real simply because grown-ass adults were doing stupid juvenile things and being rewarded for it. The culmination of that was the first half of Trump's term, where he achieved one of the two actual accomplishments of his term in political terms- Paul Ryan got his precious deficit-exploding tax cut. (The other major accomplishment later being McConnell's maneuvering paying off in a badly-imbalanced SCOTUS that's entirely out of step with the popular majority.)
But it's 2023 and 'own the libs' doesn't come close to actually owning the libs anymore. Online libs evolved and developed their own insulation against the noise machine and mostly learned the futility of bothering to engage with dedicated trolls.
Which leaves them in a conundrum, because by and large the MTG/Boebert/Gaetz wing don't actually have anything else to offer. They weren't elected to actually accomplish anything of substance, and they aren't the kind of people who really know how to do that. Nor do they have any particular substantive vision.
So really in political terms they're chucking grenades at vacant lots or each other because that's basically all they have. They do still represent an actual danger, of course, because idiots with guns still have guns. But what they're up against at this point is social inertia. Even if most people aren't particularly enthusiastic about the present system, they don't hate it to the extent that they're willing to suffer the chaos and deprivations that would accompany burning it down.
That's what gets us moments like the Red Trickle election.
And yeah, spot on with just how much Jeffries is going to be able to monkeywrench the House next year. Biden would be sitting pretty right now if he apparently wasn't so damn criminally stupid about his document control.
They've found classified documents in Pence's home recently as well. I suspect every former president & VP has some lying around, it's just that the authorities hadn't been paying attention until Trump's actions. More evidence that our overly-convoluted classification system is overdue for a rehaul.
We can spend all day going back and forth. That would be fun. But for now, I'll deal with this point.
"Biden would be sitting pretty right now if he apparently wasn't so damn criminally stupid about his document control."
Yeah, that was dumb. I'm not sure what happened there, but it's dumb. I've been in DoD-adjacent world for all of my career. Documents like that are supposed to have a cover sheet with the overall classification, a back sheet, the classification authority, declassification date, and the classification level of every page and every paragraph, and so on. I'm not sure how a properly marked document ends up in personal files, the key words being "properly marked".
On the other hand, intent matters. Data spills, for example, happen more often that you think. Sometimes someone unfamiliar with the classification guide for their particular program will send classified information over an unclassified network, and there are protocols to deal with that. If it were intentional, that person would be fired and lose their clearance. What Biden has going for him is as soon as he knew there was an issue, he allowed the process to recover those documents to take place without interference, and that's a big deal. The chips will fall where they fall. I don't think this will preclude the prosecution of Trump.
Back to work. Take care, Josh, and good talking to you.
Not only that. It's very possible, and this doesn't mean he is not responsible, that he assumed after the documents were viewed for whatever reason, that someone in his staff would call the National Archives and have them pick them up. The fact that the President wasn't aware that these documents had not been returned and that he's honest enough to bring it to everyone's attention.
That is remarkable because the President has the right to view these documents.
He could have told his lawyer to bring them to the White House. At that point he could notify the National Archives to come and pick them up. There would been no mishandling of classified documents.
Lord, how many times have we heard this from cowardly and transactional GOP pols? Let Trump blow off steam on the election, of course he'll accept his loss and leave office, don't take him literally, people (Republicans) can be redeemed even when they don't admit wrongdoing or show repentance.
This is all nonsense. This is a party who ran Herschel Walker and George Santos just because they needed a body in those seats regardless of their utter unfitness to serve. They know Greene is not fit, they just do not care.
I never thought I'd live to see Republicans voting for 9/11 Truthers, and party leadership putting them into important positions. No sense of shame. Weren't they the party who forced us into war over 9/11? And rammed through lots of Homeland Security laws that make the average person feel scared and uncomfortable? And that was all for nothing, huh?
It's important to remember the past doesn't exist for these people. Nor does the future. They know they can't defend what they've previously advocated for. There's only now, and that's where the fight has to occur. Unfortunately, our media is a mixture of credulous and incompetent.
It is less about credulousness and (in)competence than it is about profit.
I don't think it's mutually exclusive.
Most of the 9/11 Truthers I know are conservatives, not liberals. I grew up in Queens and was 15 when 9/11 happen. It started out as the first liberal conspiracy theory I came into contact with in my life, with most adherents being anti-Bush liberals. Michael Moore even delves into this territory a bit in "Fahrenheit 9/11" when discussing the Carlyle Group and Bush's responses to Dick Clark's warnings about Bin Laden being "determined" to strike the US. I put the turn from that particular conspiracy being a left-wing one to a right-wing one around 2008 at the end of the Bush 43 presidency. By then, the war in Iraq had deteriorated after we never found WMDs in Iraq, and Dick Cheney's KBR was making a killing on no-bid government contracts. For GOP grass roots voters who were serving in the wars, this was a turning point for them and they saw the writing on the wall. The financial crisis later that year and the TARP bailouts exacerbated that move away from the GOP elites.
The only thing tethering the proto-MAGA base to their elites who kept using them as recycled cannon fodder in the war on terror was the "threat" of America's first black president. They got into a lot of conspiracy theories from there--mostly via Alex Jones and the new "alt-media" like Breitbart, Ron Paul's popularity within the grass roots base skyrocketed, and when Romney lost to Obama in 2012, the proto-MAGA base finally turned on their elites and by 2016 they chose Trump as the form of their destructor to take on the "globalist government." Now it's mostly a right-wing conspiracy because if you believe in "globalist governments" then you probably think that 9/11 was an inside job organized by "globalists" to strengthen their hold over governments and the hold that those governments have over the economy.
Point being: MAGA sees the Bush dynasty as being "the other side of the same coin" with the powerful liberals who they think run "globalist governments," so their radicalism against both "the coin" and the globalism it controls doesn't see color in political parties, it sees wealth and power backing both sides and THAT is their enemy. The "old money" power players who control everything in government, economics, and foreign policy. That's why they see conspiracy theorists as their friends and conservative old money ivy league grads as imposters. That's why they chose Trump over Rubio or Cruz in 2015. He was THEIR conspiracy theorist in chief. He saw things the way they did. The whole "I gave money to both dems and republicans all these years because I KNOW the system is rigged" had a message that really resonated with the MAGA base because it is true.
There are very clear boundaries to MAGA and they are policed (for the most part). People that do not toe the line get "canceled."
This is par for the course with most strong in/out group structures. It isn't that the boundaries make sense or are true, or are consistent across the spectrum--it is that they exist and are simple to understand. Very much in/out, good/bad what zero tolerance or allowance for context or thought.
Lots of code words and slogans that mean something specific to the in group in comparison to what they mean to the out group. Things get compacted and simplified and sloganized.
The "leadership" (which does no actual leading) must toe the line or get purged. Same thing with the rank and file. It is almost religious in function and behavior... and given time it tends to eat itself, barring some form of control being imposed.
I do not see anyone in a position (currently) to impose that control--not in the GoP and not in the MAGA movement.
💯 %!!!!!!!!!!!!
Plus, she’s 48. Whatever maturing she did happened a long time ago.
So, by that way of thinking, no one evolves. No more lifelong learning. No changes of heart, changes of mind. Perhaps you believe in predestination too. Lock 'em up, throwaway the key. Or, permanent public banishment, otherwise known as cancellation. Greene is changing. I can't say for better or worse, but changing. Looks like she lost some weight, addressed her complexion, dumped a husband, attached herself to McCarthy, and disagreed with Boebert on something, or another. It's a start. Encourage her to change more -- come back to humanity, Greene, all can be forgiven. Where there is life, there is hope.
Not after what she has done to this country for her own gain. Hell no. She can never be trusted. She is a criminal and evil.
The Marjorie Taylor-Greene’s of the world do not change in any meaningful way.
I realize your comment was directed to Paul, but I'd like to address it.
She posted an hour ago on Twitter that "Antifa are the ground troops for the Democrat Party". You may be right in the sense that people *can* evolve. But why would MTG choose to? She's relevant now. She's got Kevin McCarthy's gonads in her purse. Most of all, she's a right wing celebrity.
She has shown us every day who and what she is. Because her career depends on it, She Will Not Change.
Yup. And let's be honest: she never had to mature because her father was very wealthy and that can skew the way one looks at life. So what we see is what we get.