Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert usually find themselves on the same side of issues. But they’re now engaged in a feud that, unsurprisingly—given their personalities—turned personal almost immediately.
Both far-right Republicans first elected in 2020, Greene and Boebert have spent the last few years essentially in lockstep with a far-right agenda of transphobia, racism, and Jan. 6 apologia.
But as the pair prepare to begin life in the House majority for the first time, they’re now disagreeing over who should be the next House Speaker. Greene is backing current Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, and Boebert has thus far joined several high-profile far-right members of Congress in withholding her support from McCarthy.
Boebert appeared with far-right activist Charlie Kirk at right-wing student group Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference Monday and was asked about Greene’s support of McCarthy.
“I’ve been aligned with Marjorie and accused of believing a lot of the things that she believes in,” Boebert said. “I don’t believe in this, just like I don’t believe in Jewish space lasers.”
Boebert was referring to just one of the many conspiracy theories Greene has pushed over the past few years—that the 2018 Camp Fire in California was the result of a beam from “solar space generators” that was somehow tied to the Rothschild banking family, which is frequently used as an antisemitic trope.
Greene then retweeted a clip of Boebert’s comments and blasted her colleague, who unexpectedly almost lost her re-election bid in a safe Trump district in Colorado.
“I’ve supported and donated to Lauren Boebert,” Greene wrote. “President Trump has supported and donated to Lauren Boebert. Kevin McCarthy has supported and donated to Lauren Boebert. She just barely came through by 500 votes.”
Greene then said Boebert was insufficiently loyal to Trump and McCarthy.
“She gladly takes our $$$ but when she’s been asked: Lauren refuses to endorse President Trump, she refuses to support Kevin McCarthy, and she childishly threw me under the bus for a cheap sound bite,” Greene wrote in another tweet.
She went on to add that “conservative fighters” should “work together to Save America” and not participate in “high school drama and media sound bites.” Boebert’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
There have been longstanding rumors of Greene and Boebert’s personal dislike for each other. In March, the two apparently got into a verbal altercation that nearly turned physical during a meeting of the House Freedom Caucus’s board of directors, Politico reported in April.
Given the Republicans’ narrow majority due to their underwhelming midterm performance—McCarthy once predicted they would win more than 60 seats in the House, but the GOP ultimately won 10—McCarthy can only afford to lose a handful of Republican votes in his bid to become speaker. But already, several far-right Republicans including Gaetz and Rep. Andy Biggs have pledged that they won’t vote for McCarthy, even as more moderate Republicans have threatened to work with Democrats to elect someone even less palatable to the far right.
Boebert said Monday that she wasn’t a “hard no” on McCarthy, but that she would only vote for him if the House majority is given the power to remove McCarthy as speaker, a mechanism known as “vacate the chair.” This tactic most famously helped force out former Speaker John Boehner in 2015.
“We have to have an accountability mechanism on the Speaker of the House,” Boebert said during the interview with Kirk. “This is third in command for the presidency of the United States of American … and we are going to strip away the one check-and-balance that members of Congress have?”
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