Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Finally Making Good on Her Johnson Threats

Two months after announcing it, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene claims she’s finally going to file a motion to vacate House Speaker Mike Jonhson sometime next week.

“Next week, I am gonna be calling this motion to vacate,” Greene said at a press conference Wednesday morning, calling Johnson a “uniparty” lawmaker for getting the Democrats to back him and claiming that the “American people need to see a recorded vote.”

Greene filed a motion to vacate in March after Johnson worked with Democrats and Republicans in the Senate to pass a $1.2 trillion omnibus bill, torching him for accomplishing one of the legislature’s primary annual responsibilities: funding the government.

In the months since she announced her intentions to undermine the Republican House leader, Greene has had just a small handful of GOP defectors join her. But when pressed about who her tiny cohort would prefer to have run the House, Greene simply said “we have people,” and then said she wouldn’t be “naming names.”

Johnson dismissed Greene’s motion as “wrong for the Republican Conference, wrong for the institution, and wrong for the country.”

When the vote does come to a head, Johnson’s seat appears to be, effectively, safe. Both Republicans and Democratic leadership have come out in support of the speaker, who in the seven months since he took the gavel has been forced to foster bipartisanship on controversial legislation ranging from foreign aid packages to domestic surveillance programs.

And despite what Greene has described as a “slimy back room deal,” Johnson insisted Tuesday that he hadn’t sought help from any Democrats to save his skin. Instead, Democrats seem to have decided on their own to support Johnson.

“At this moment, upon completion of our national security work, the time has come to turn the page on this chapter of Pro-Putin Republican obstruction,” wrote the Democratic leaders of the House in a joint statement issued Tuesday. “We will vote to table Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Motion to Vacate the Chair. If she invokes the motion, it will not succeed.”

Greene’s strategy, meanwhile, hasn’t panned out half as well for her. The Georgian’s repeated threats to oust Johnson with such meager support has backed her into a corner. If she calls the vote off now, she’ll look weak. But the apparent bit of political theater isn’t earning her any allies: even the ultimate chaos-inducing candidate, Donald Trump, supports Johnson’s tenure.

In a Tuesday interview on NewsNation’s The Hill, Johnson threw his own shade at Greene.

“Bless her heart,” the Louisiana lawmaker said when asked if he considers her a serious lawmaker. “I don’t think she is proving to be. No. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about her.”

This story has been updated.