Marjorie Taylor Greene joins The Rubin Report to challenge AOC's fascist label, arguing Democrats operate in "2024 campaign mode" while she defends mainstream GOP stances on borders and the Second Amendment. She details the Republican "civil war" over Kevin McCarthy, critiques Biden's incompetence regarding Afghanistan and alleged China ties, and advocates for her "Protect Children's Innocence Bill" to ban gender-affirming care under 18. Greene also supports armed school guards, questions SSRIs' role in violence, and targets federal funding for disinformation groups like NewsGuard, framing these conflicts as a battle against weaponized government narratives. [Automatically generated summary]
I said to you right before we started, we've got some polls up here that I thought maybe you could do some pull-ups from because you're always doing exercise on the Capitol.
Should we start that way with a couple of pull-ups or maybe we'll finish that way?
Well, it seems to be in Washington, D.C., if you come in very convicted in your beliefs and really represent your district and the beliefs that your district hold.
You know, things like secure borders, a strong economy, freedom of speech, protecting our Second Amendment, saying no more foreign wars, let's focus on America and America first.
Um, being unapologetic about being pro-life, wanting to protect children that seem to be under attack from these gender lies, things like that, uh, Washington DC and the mainstream media labels extreme, but actually in real America, you know, Northwest Georgia where I come from and pretty much all across the country, those types of things are not extreme.
It's more Washington DC's position that is extreme.
I sat down yesterday with Speaker McCarthy at the Capitol and he was talking about the agenda and sort of the new Republicans that are here and there does seem to be a better messaging at the moment.
It's partly why I'm here for three days to talk to all of you guys because it does seem like something's a little bit different than say the Republican of five or ten years ago.
Yes, and I think I can say I've played a role in that.
That was one of my objectives when I came to Washington, was to change the Republican Party.
You see, I was a regular American, never had run for office, wasn't involved in politics at all, but I was very upset with the Republican Party.
I was a Republican voter, but I didn't feel like the Republicans in Washington reflected our values.
And so since I've come to Washington, I've never backed down on the messaging that I've brought, the bills that I've introduced, but also having communication within our conference.
Sometimes it's been arguments, you know, it's been confrontation.
At times it's been explanations and really good conversations of here's where our Republican Party needs to move to.
This will reflect our voters across the country and then really be good for our country overall.
I supported Kevin McCarthy in the Speaker's race because I spent a lot of time talking with him ahead of time about what his goals were, what his objectives were, and also I developed a relationship with him.
And was really glad that he listened to me and the things that were important for my district as well.
Was it funny how that whole thing was working out and the strange bedfellows that created?
Because it was like Trump was supporting him.
You were supporting him.
Gates, who obviously you're in line with on a lot of things, was not supporting him.
And then everybody was sort of, the media was loving the fact that you guys weren't all walking in lockstep, which actually I tend to think is good that people are thinking for themselves, but that it created all of these odd relationships that maybe didn't exist before.
Well, I think what it did is it pulled back the curtain into the Republican conference and it showed different views that the media didn't expect.
And a lot of people, of course, just watching from the outside didn't expect.
Over half of the Freedom Caucus, I'm a member of the Freedom Caucus, over half of the Freedom Caucus supported Kevin McCarthy, myself, Jim Jordan, many others.
But then my some of my best friends, the people that I'm always in line with,
they didn't. They opposed him.
And then you saw the debate back and forth, sort of the internal war.
But like I said, it was it was all on display on cameras, on C-SPAN.
And the media was front and center, of course, enjoying it.
Well, you want to know why the media really likes to see Republicans
fight with each other.
But I have been calling basic our internal arguments.
I call them the civil war within the party.
And I think it's good.
I really do.
This is what Washington is about.
It's a place where we hammer out debates.
We discuss policy.
And yeah, that means that we argue sometimes.
I never think that's a bad thing.
What we do have to do in our conference though is we worked it out.
We elected Kevin McCarthy as speaker.
We had our rules package.
It was the same, literally the same from day one to the last day.
Only one change to motion to vacate the chair went from five members to one member.
That was the only change in the rules package.
But what we had to do is we had to say, all right, now that we've been through this, We have to come together because there's only 222 Republicans.
It takes 218 to pass anything on the House floor.
And we have big battles ahead.
We have the budget.
We've got the debt ceiling fight.
We're going to have the NDAA.
We've got big things that we have to do.
We don't control the Senate and we don't control the White House.
So speaking of those numbers in the Senate, one of the things that you guys just did pass is this parental rights and education bill.
And as a Floridian, I am well aware of a little transparency in education, obviously.
Were you shocked that not one Democrat signed this thing?
I mean, all it is about is basically that you've got to sign up, like back in the day, third grade, you're going to the zoo, your parent has to sign something saying you're going to the zoo.
And so the things that they said in the bill debate actually presided in the chair in some of it, and then was paying close attention to that committee.
They were accusing Republicans of banning books, book burnings, and not teaching history.
They even called us racist.
They called us all kinds of names when what we were really saying is we want parents
to have the rights to have control over curriculum, to be able to talk to their school boards,
of course, have control over their children because they're the parents.
And then the second piece there, they're also the taxpayers that fund the schools.
So I think their voice should be just as important, and all of us Republicans agreed, in spite of not one Democrat.
So when AOC basically calls this thing fascist, which she did on the floor, and then, was it Hakeem Jeffries, I think, said that they're not gonna teach, they don't want, the Republicans don't want the Holocaust to be taught.
I'm guessing these guys don't talk to you on the DL, right?
Like you're not getting a lot of hellos in the hallways there and being like, hey guys, you know it's not true.
If people have been paying attention, he's tweeted out in the past like week or so, he's, he's, he's blaming Republicans for not wanting to fund border security to stop fentanyl from coming in the country, which is laughable because under Joe Biden, we've seen fentanyl increase.
It's literally doubled coming in the country and over 300 Americans die every single day.
from fentanyl poisoning.
So they are in messaging mode, accusing us of what they literally do and lying about it.
It's probably hard for a lot of people outside of Georgia to understand exactly what you explained.
So Brian Kemp, our governor, did something really well.
When all the COVID shutdowns happened, Florida, we were actually the first state to reopen.
Thankfully.
And that was something I had talked with Brian Kemp a lot about.
I would call him, Governor, we've got to reopen.
We need our schools reopened.
Our businesses need to be reopened.
You know, basically begging him.
Thankfully, Governor Kemp listened to all of us that were asking him for these things.
We reopened.
So our businesses got open again.
People went back to work.
Our kids weren't trapped at home suffering from, oh my gosh, the list goes on with that.
So people in Georgia had a lot of things to be happy with Governor Kemp about.
Another thing that he did is he passed constitutional carry.
Georgia is a big gun state.
We have a lot of gun owners and Second Amendment supporters.
So that was a critical piece of legislation that he got done.
And we have a very strong economy in Georgia.
So these are the things that people may forget about where they get caught up in watching like the President Trump, Governor Kemp arguments, you know, those, then there's a really more side stories.
Another thing that people may not realize is a campaign is just like a business.
And not all of them do a good job.
They really don't.
There's a lot that goes into a campaign.
Its messaging is really important.
There's TV ads and placement, radio ads and placement.
Social media is even just as important as TV and radio, maybe even more so.
It's your ground team, door knocking, phone calls.
I mean, it literally is a mini business, and they don't always do it well.
Hershel Walker's campaign was run by Washington, D.C.
It wasn't run by people in Georgia that really understand Republican Georgia voters.
Mitch McConnell's views and values are not accepted in Georgia, and that proved to be true with Kelly Loeffler's campaign.
So when you have Team Mitch shirts going around in my district, knocking doors, that's not a good look for your Republican Senator's candidate, and that's just the truth.
Got, got banned or got striked or, or locked out of their accounts.
Because we were warning, this looks like a, this looks like a violent extremist terrorist.
Antifa, I've, I have entered a resolution to declare them as domestic terrorists.
That's what they are.
The group organizing it, what is an Antifa group locally, and they're, they're organizing this event called Trans Day of Vengeance, just on the heels of the horrific school shooting in Nashville.
So all of us were in alarm and I tweeted about it and got banned for seven days, but they've reopened my account this morning.
Were you able, during the Twitter hearings, and some of them are still ongoing and now there's this TikTok situation and all that, were you able to find out what level of coordination actually took your account out last year?
It was really weird, the child porn thing with Twitter, because nobody seemed to care about it until Elon Musk came over, and then suddenly everybody cared about it.
Elon's doing more about it than anybody, but now all the articles are that he's not doing enough.
Because I kept saying during the hearings, it's not that I have sympathy for these Twitter people, but they're private employees who are maybe up to no good for sure, but they are also working with government people, and it seems like we still don't really know who those people are or how high that goes up.
So when you don't pay for something, that means that it discontinues.
So we've been looking into things.
I spoke with Jonathan Turley last night and he had a great suggestion for us on oversight.
But this also goes into our budget and appropriations.
We give, the federal government gives out grants.
Okay.
All kinds of grants.
And that's a whole nother topic we could talk about.
There's a lot of grants we have to cut out, but they give out grants for disinformation.
So this is basically tax dollars funding all kinds of groups, outside groups, and they spend all their time finding things they want to censor.
Then they would send them to Homeland Security, send them to the FBI and so forth.
And then they come in and they funnel them down and then Wipe them off of not just Twitter, which is actually one of the smaller social media companies, Facebook and Instagram on the much bigger ones.
They very likely have that grant for that amount of money or who knows more.
And it's probably, they have to renew it each year.
See, that's exactly what we're going to start looking into.
But what we have to do is we have to take that into the budget and into our appropriations process.
Take a little pencil and it's eraser and we're not paying for this.
We have to cut spending anyways.
We should cut out these programs.
And so that is what I'm hoping to do.
And we have a lot of heavy discussions right now that are ongoing with the budget while we're trying to get, you know, senile Joe Biden to actually come talk to us and talk to Kevin McCarthy and actually start negotiating some of this.
Well, as long as you went there, I mean, what's going on with this president?
What's going on?
It seems to me that everyone in this town knows something's not right and everyone's kinda... You basically said it more forwardly than most at this point.
Do you think you'll get, I mean, considering that no Democrat signed on the transparency bill, do you think you'll get one Democrat to, because again, I haven't, what I know people will do is they'll say, well, she's either a bigot or something towards trans people, which is actually completely the reverse of what you just said.
But that's probably why a certain amount of Democrats that maybe aren't completely off the deep end, they'll just be like, I'm not signing on because it's got Marjorie's name on it.
They've done a really good job creating a character of me that doesn't exist, and they present it to the public all the time, so that could be the case.
But I would hope that they could put responsibility and rational thought above politics and lies in the media, because these are our children.
We're seeing story years later, these kids have serious medical issues and they regret it and they commit suicide.
You know, they say this is to prevent suicide.
They're committing suicide after they transition and it's a serious problem, but my bill is really important.
I'm, I'm have a lot of support.
It's a sort of a flagship bill for all the states.
Mine was the first bill introduced in the nation.
What it would do is make it a federal law to stop any so called gender affirming care on anyone under the age of 18.
No puberty blockers, no hormone treatments.
It stops all of that.
And it gives these victims a right to sue if they have some sort of injury involved, if they've already gone through the process.
And so I think it's important.
And I really hope that every Republican will vote for it.
I hope that Democrats will come around and see this is the right thing to do.
And we just got to protect kids and let them grow up.
Philosophically, I'm curious, would you prefer that it be done at the state level?
You're obviously trying to do it at the federal level, but would you prefer, I mean, obviously Cali's not gonna do it, but Georgia might, Florida might.
It's actually happening in Florida right now.
Would that be your preference generally, to have everything be done at the state level?
I'm a big state rights person, but on this one, no.
I'll tell you why.
And I have this argument with some of my conservative friends.
They're saying, this is a state issue, Marjorie.
And I say, no, it's not.
California passed the bill.
They put it on Governor Newsom's desk and he signed it, making California a trans kid's Sanctuary state.
Sanctuary state.
So not only are they saying that the government of California is going to wrap them in and make this process happen for these kids, they also take away parents' rights to stop it.
That is a state that has crossed the line in my opinion.
California is not alone.
We're looking at New York, we're looking at Washington, we're looking at other states, blue states that are following down the same track.
and going to enable this process even worse, so more children are going to be victims.
Secondly, we do have federal laws that prevent child abuse.
And this one to me falls in the child abuse lane.
And I think it's important to make it a federal law.
And they warned us of a lot of the serious problems that we're seeing today.
I think we've maintained a military.
We've got to protect our borders.
Um, uh, we definitely need, need to stay the United States of America, but many Republicans, many conservatives have gotten so fed up with the left's ideas.
The climate change lies.
I'm sorry, we don't want to give up our gas stoves.
We like to be able to buy a gas or diesel-fueled combustion engine vehicle.
We don't want to be forced onto electric.
I mean, we might choose to buy it, but we don't want to be forced.
We don't want our children being taught that there's more than two genders.
We say there's only two, male and female, and so on.
We can give all the examples.
And Republicans, you know, they used to say they needed a safe space.
The left said they needed a safe space.
We've gotten to the place where we're like, we need a safe space.
And so that's what I was talking about when I mentioned national divorce and dividing up.
There's a lot of pretty good reporters on the Hill.
I try not to attack the media because I actually respect The press and I really want to see them.
I want to see the political bias drop out of the press and I think the profession of journalism is a dying art and I really want to see it come back and I want the press and I tell them I literally tell them this I'm probably one of the Few members of Congress, if it really came down to it, that would fight to the very end to defend their freedom because I think it's important and it needs to be preserved.
And I'm also, at the same time, one of the most attacked people by the press.
But I have a faith in humanity and I really want to see them do a better job.
And I would like to see our press corps have their freedom and remove the political bias and just report the news for the people.
When I was in 11th grade, it was the first year that then Senator Joe Biden had gotten the law passed to make schools gun-free school zones.
And before that, you know, the guys would pull up in their trucks and they had their hunting rifles in their trucks.
It wasn't uncommon for guns to be at school.
But when I was in 11th grade, that law passed, schools became gun-free school zones.
One of the kids at my school brought three guns to school into the first period class and took over our entire school after firing a weapon.
And so we spent five hours on lockdown.
So I know that fear of being trapped in a school where there's no good guy with a gun, the only person that has a gun, and he had three.
was a very mentally disturbed, emotionally upset student that was around my same age.
And we were all at mercy of what he might decide to do.
Luckily, no one died that day.
So I have that perspective and I believe children are, they're our most precious resource.
If President Biden is protected by guns, Nancy Pelosi is protected by guns,
our Capitol is protected by men with guns. I think our kids should be protected.
And if this threat, we see it over and over again, if it's going to keep going, well, you know what?
We need to harden our schools and protect our kids the same way we protect gold, money in banks, Hollywood celebrities at their big banquets and award ceremonies.
I believe that's what we should do.
But I've asked this question.
I think we need to finally take a look at SSRIs.
We need to look at these medications for anxiety and depression because, I mean, pretty much every single one of these shooters is on or off these meds.
I've also wondered about this particular shooter in Nashville.
What medications were they taking if they were transitioned?
How much testosterone?
unidentified
Right, that's going to open up a whole other set of issues with this.
What do you think, you know, they haven't released the manifesto that apparently she wrote.
I'm really 50-50 on this.
I believe in transparency, but on another side of that, if they release it, it almost incentivizes more people to do it, because then it's saying to them, oh, I can do something crazy and then have the whole world read my, you know, Mein Kampf, in essence.