Let's have our minds open. Not so's your brain falls out, but enough to learn.
Note From Glenn Greenwald: The following is the full show transcript, for subscribers only, of a recent episode of our System Update program, broadcast live on Rumble on Wednesday, February 1, 2023. Going forward, every new transcript will be sent out by email and posted to our Locals page, where you'll find the transcripts for previous shows.
Watch System Update Episode #33 Here on Rumble.
Virtually everything that can be said about our guest tonight, Marjorie Taylor Greene, has been said, often without the slightest regard for whether or not it is true. But whatever one's views of her may be, there is no denying that in a very short period of time – she is just now entering her second term in Congress – she has become one of the most prominent, influential and popular politicians in America.
As The New York Times recounted in an article on her complex history with current House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, when Democrats were plotting to strip her of all of her Committee assignments due to controversial comments she made on the Internet before she was even elected to Congress, she "stormed into Mr. McCarthy's office in the Capitol late one night, in February 2021, and handed him a letter signed by local Republican leaders in her district, urging him to keep her on committees. They had received "countless messages", they said, from their voters who were intent on supporting her."
Many things interest me about the Republican Congresswoman representing Georgia's 14th Congressional District – her strident opposition to bipartisan foreign policy orthodoxy in Washington, the still escalating U.S. role in the war in Ukraine, her opposition to the evils of the U.S. Security State and Big Tech: all of which we'll talk about – but one often overlooked aspect of her quick rise to prominence is the Founders' aspiration to have a country free of a professionalized political class, but instead one that would be governed by "citizen-legislators" – people who have other jobs and professions beyond "politician" and who go to Washington for a few years after a lot of experience elsewhere to serve in the model of public service and then go back to their regular lives.
Anyone who was able to construct a prominent political profile without decades of striving for political power, without drearily climbing the career ladder from low-level political office and trying to take a step up every few years, without the benefit of a famous political parent or a famous family name – in other words, a self-made person in Washington – is automatically someone who will be of greater interest to me than people who seemingly popped out of the womb dreaming of one day being in the U.S. Senate. Whatever else one might think of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, that's true of her, and it's at least equally true of Congresswoman Greene.
Look at the two most senior politicians who lead their respective parties in the Senate. Republican leader Mitch McConnell has been a senator since 1985 – for almost 40 years. Other than a few years in the early 1970s when he worked as a lawyer, McConnell has never had any job outside of being a politician. The Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, was elected to the New York State Assembly at the age of 24. He was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1980 at the age of 30, and then to the U.S. Senate in 1999. He's been in Congress for 43 years. It's impossible to find people more insular and insulated and aberrational than they – their lives bear not even the slightest resemblance to those whom they pretend to represent.
When AOC first ran for Congress, in 2018, almost nobody paid attention to her primary race, in large part because nobody had even heard of her opponent, Joe Crowley. That was the case, even though Crowley was one of the most powerful members of Congress: entrenched in House Democratic leadership and touted as the likely successor to Nancy Pelosi.
But almost nobody in his district even knew who he was. He barely visited Queens, the district he nominally represented. There was no such thing as a "Joe Crowley supporter". His extremely significant power had nothing to do with any popular support – he had none – and it has everything to do with his ability to navigate the backrooms of Congress, where a lobbyist for Google and Raytheon lurk, telling party leadership, both parties, what they want, as they hand over massive checks to build their war chests. That's the reality of how Washington works and has worked for decades in both parties.
Marjorie Taylor Greene's power comes exclusively from popular support. Her relevance depends only upon one thing: the fact that, whether you like it or not, millions of Americans trust her, support her and will stand behind her. And that's what should matter.
Regardless of what you think about her causes and her ideology – and she is, needless to say, a deeply polarizing figure, as is almost everyone who holds genuinely passionate convictions as a matter of principle – I think one could say without much controversy that she's the most organic and authentic representation in Congress of the MAGA movement that attracted the support of tens of millions of Americans from every walk of life, from every racial and ethnic group and from every part of the country. And that just has to matter in politics. The fact that someone actually has large amounts of popular support. In Washington, for those who know how to wield it – and she has learned a lot about how to do so in the past two years – that's real power.
There was a reason that "citizen-legislators", rather than a professionalized political class, was what the Founders envisioned. By definition, people have lived most of their lives without political power and political office has far more in common with those they are supposed to represent. They tend to be far more willing to learn, to grow, to evolve – not as the result of calculating careerist decisions, but simply because people who arrive in Washington afresh are not yet dependent upon it. They typically end up seeing things and learning things about how the country really works, and that, in turn, makes them less captive to party and dogma and more open to growth and change.
Congresswoman Greene is no ordinary member of Congress, and she's no ordinary Republican either. Many of her most passionately held views are ones that were utterly anathema to the Republican Party until Donald Trump came along in 2016 and became the Republican nominee for president not by affirming and validating long standing Republican orthodoxies – voters already had Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio if they wanted that – but instead, by denouncing and vowing to uproot his own party's establishment orthodoxies.
For that reason, Greene often inspires more anger and contempt in establishment Republican circles than she does among American liberals. Many of her views, her worldview, and her approach to politics, are a threat to subvert the GOP establishment and they know that. And that's why many of them despise her. But conservative voters also know that she's a threat to subvert the GOP establishment and that's why so many of them trust and support her.
There are a lot more views I have to share about Congresswoman Greene but rather than take more time for me to express those, I'd rather spend our time letting her speak for herself. I'm thrilled that she's here tonight to do just that.
G. Greenwald: Congresswoman, good evening. It's great to see you. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us.
Rep. Greene: Hi, Glenn. I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you for having me.
G. Greenwald: Absolutely. So, I was just talking about one of the things that I find interesting about your rise to prominence in such a short period of time, which is the pre-political trajectory you had, you didn't spend a lot of time plotting how to get elected to politics. You never ran for office. Previously, you had what I would describe as a life that has a lot in common with ordinary Americans. Talk about just in general, what your life was before you became Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, and how that shapes the work you do in Washington.
Rep. Greene: Well, I am just a regular American. I've never been in politics before, never held political office. I never even went to a meeting. As a matter of fact, I'm a business owner. Very proud mom, that's the best part of my life. And I just became angry over time with the failures that I saw in Washington, D.C., that regular Americans were able to get done every single day in our and our normal lives. Being a business owner and growing up in a family business, serving our customers was the most important thing we could do. I was raised with the belief that the customer is king, and I see the American taxpayer as the customer of the federal government. But I see complete failure from our federal government. We're basically on the brink of falling apart. So, I decided that instead of complaining on Facebook or social media or to my friends, I thought, okay, I'll step up to the plate and take a swing at this and see if I can do a better job.
G. Greenwald: So, speaking of Facebook and social media and the like and your use of it before you got to Congress, it's part of what makes you polarizing in certain circles that you said and published things on those platforms that you ultimately came to disregard and repudiate. It's an experience I know I had, too, when I was a lawyer, and I then first became a journalist and was able to kind of delve into, in a full-time way, political realities. I realized that a lot of things that I had been led to believe previously when I was just kind of able to only pay partial attention turned out to be untrue. I think it's true for everybody. What's rare is to actually acknowledge and admit that as you've done. Talk a little about that process, what it was like to navigate through things you believe, and come to reaffirm some of them, reject others. What has that process been like for you?
Rep. Greene: Well, it's been, honestly, a really easy one, Glenn, and I'll tell you why. You see, it's not just people on the right, it's people on the left that are victims of conspiracy theories all over the Internet and social media. You know, so I did go through a process where I had to say, look, I'm sorry, I said a few things on social media. But to be honest with you, as a regular American, when you look at Washington, D.C., it doesn't make sense why we're in such pitiful debt that we're in. When as an American at home I could pay my bills every day and be able to save money and I wasn't in debt. And I'm not in debt now. And then looking also at our government failures, it's like, why doesn't our government care about our southern border or our border period? But yet we're obsessed with every other country's border across the world. And there were just so many injustices. It's easy to believe things that you read on the Internet.
You know, there are a lot of people that believe insane lies about me, that they read on social media, on the Internet. And then we have major media companies, large corporations that have told lies every single day, 24 x7 on cable news, not only to Americans but all over the world. And so, see, I think everyone is a little bit of a victim of so-called misinformation, but I don't think that's anything to be totally ashamed of. But it's really easy to say you're sorry and move forward. You know who I am as a person. I've never broken a law. I've always paid my taxes. I've done everything right in my life, you know, And I'm pretty successful and I'm proud of that. If I believe something wrong and had to say I'm sorry for it. Well, you know what? Everyone makes mistakes.
G. Greenwald: You know, it was very soon when I when we announced that I was going to be speaking to you tonight, there was a wide range of reactions, including rage, as you might imagine, the idea that a journalist will actually interview a member of Congress apparently has become something that is now regarded as immoral or a cause of anger. But one of the things that also I found very bizarre about the reaction saying, oh, why would you talk to her if she spread conspiracy theories, if you want to talk about strange conspiracy theories, you know, what prompted me to get into politics and journalism was the fact that I watched every major American institution endorse what turned out to be an outright falsehood, namely that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons or biological and chemical weapons programs that led to a war that killed in excess of a million people, depending on how you count. All of those people who did that are now in all of the respectable precincts and welcomed on every show.
We had a 2008 financial crisis that wiped out generational wealth for millions of Americans. And then we spent the last four years hearing the most prominent members of society, the most prestigious media outlets, claiming that the Kremlin had taken over the United States, and had seized control of the levers of power. Do you think that one of the reasons why Americans fall victim to conspiracy theories that aren't true, as you've acknowledged was true of you, is because there has been such a breakdown of trust in institutional authority and the legitimacy of institutions? And on some level, people don't know what to believe any longer.
Rep. Greene: Yeah, I think that's so true and so well said. I really appreciate the way you put that, and I share a lot of what you said. I mean, here, our country, after 9/11, went straight into war looking for so-called weapons of mass destruction. And we didn't find any, but we lost thousands of lives, of American military lives, and we saw our brothers and friends and cousins and uncles and fathers come back home, maimed and disfigured and suffering from PTSD and committing suicide. There are so many things that we have been told are true by our trusted leaders but then we watch things unfold and, you know, it ends up being where things don't add up and people don't know what to believe anymore. I mean, we can talk about… here's things that have been said about me that are absolutely shocking to me every single day. If I look in my comments, someone will accuse me of being the pipe bomber on January 5th, and that's absurd. But there's a whole bunch of people that believe it, a bunch of Hollywood celebrities and so-called smart people. You know, probably some of the people that were outraged that you would dare interview me on your show. Every single day, there are people that think that I said a phrase called "Jewish space lasers," a phrase that I never said. As a matter of fact, it was created and invented in a story that a bunch of people read in the news, and they believe that about me. But in fact, that's something I never said. And I don't hold any type of beliefs like that at all.
But now we look at our leaders in Washington and we should be able to trust our leaders in Washington. We should be able to trust all of our leaders and believe what they tell us and trust them that they're going to do a good job. But they haven't done it for so long now that they have failed us. And people are grasping, no matter where they are in the political spectrum, they're grasping and trying to figure out, well, what do we believe and who do we believe? And I believe it's causing a very dangerous situation in a certain percentage of our population where they're becoming so fed up and so angry that they don't believe anyone and they can't be satisfied no matter what solution you present, no matter what you tell them, even if you're telling them the straight facts, they still don't believe you. And so, I think we're going down a very dangerous road. But this is what happens when governments fail their people so severely.
We're over $34 trillion in debt, Glenn, and we're looking at having to raise our debt ceiling again so that we don't default. And that's extremely important. But at the same time, we're having to fight our president, President Biden, over reducing spending, which is hard to fathom because just as you listed, this man has spent decades in Washington and he can't connect with regular Americans like I can. And he can't even figure out why people think this overspending is a problem. He's more interested in what's happening over in Ukraine and figuring out how to get Crimea. And he's willing to go as far as possible, mean maybe even nuclear, in order to do that. But yet he's disconnected from what's happening at the southern border. He doesn't care that people are dying of fentanyl every single day. He doesn't hear that over 5 million people are flooding into our country. And he doesn't understand why the youth, the young people, young adults in this nation aren't pursuing jobs and careers. So, I think there is such a disconnect between our so-called leaders, who people should trust and what they believe on the Internet to the point where –think about this, Glenn, people will believe a perfect stranger that they have never met in their life that may have some kind of interesting name that they call themselves. And because they have a podcast, not only will they believe them, but they'll donate money to them. And I think that's a very dangerous place for us to be.
G. Greenwald: Yeah. I mean, if you look at, I think, history and see a societal breakdown and genuine civil strife, it's almost always because there becomes this breach, this enormous gap between how elites are living, you know, kind of the classic wall behind the Versailles, of France, and the entire rest of the population.
So let me ask you, though, because there is this kind of unavoidable irony in a sense, which is you start off as an outsider, you're angry about what's going on in Washington, but now you're in Washington, you're inside the kind of halls of power you have all the passes that let you in. In 2010, I read a book by the host on MSNBC, Chris Hayes. It was quite a good book. It was called "Twilight of the Elites". And one of the arguments Chris made in this book was that elite institutions are extremely adept from decades of practice in taking anybody who enters their institutions, and no matter how well-intentioned they may be, no matter how smart they might be, how genuine they might be about trying to kind of subvert the institutions from within, and, over time, they can kind of co-opt you. They can say, here's a little benefit that we're willing to give you if you play ball a little bit with us here. And his argument was, no matter how well-intentioned, and determined you are to avoid that, it's basically inevitable that you'll be cognitively captured. And I remember asking Chris, "well, you just got a primetime show on MSNBC. What are you doing to protect yourself and shield yourself from that?" And he said, 'Well, you know, actually, I haven't really thought about it.' Watching him over the years turned into a Democratic Party mouthpiece and little else, I wish that he had thought about it.
But let me ask you that. What are you kind of aware of those temptations, of those machinations, of the ability of D.C. institutions to take someone like yourself who arrives ready to battle, ready to fight, and kind of co-opt you? And do you feel like you have a plan to insulate yourself from that?
Rep. Greene: Yeah. And this is such a big subject. There are multiple layers to this. So, I think one place to start is something that people might find interesting is political donations. Now, I'm very lucky and I'm very blessed to be supported by so many regular Americans. I received small-dollar donations. So, for me, that is not a problem. And I'm so grateful for that. But there's a lot of members of Congress that come here and a lot of senators as well, that just don't rise in popularity, may not have a good fundraising operation put together, and it comes time for reelection and they really need help. And in their primary, they may be facing a challenger or multiple challengers and they need help getting reelected. And so that's where the lobbyists come in. That's where Big Techs come in, and that's where people can maybe fall in line and not stay the true fighters that they were when they came to Washington. It's more where they fall in line and listen to a lobbyist that literally will say this – because I've heard it before – they just say that, you know, listen, Congressman, if you will just vote with us about 60% of the time, that's all we ask, 60% of the time, we're going to need you on some key bills like appropriations, the NDAA and some other things. And then the other 40% of the time, you know, you can take your issues, you can fight whether you're far-right, moderate, wherever you are, and you can fight on those issues. But we're going to need you right here about 60% of the time. And that's what creates what I call, Glenn, the Uniparty – that creates the Uniparty. And so, where you have – and that doesn't mean lobbyists are bad people – they're salespeople. That's what people need to understand. These are salespeople and their customers, the clients that they're selling for are large corporations. They're industries that need their needs met, too. And so, they hire lobbyists, send them in to talk to people like me, so that they can get what they need, put in bills to help their industry, protect their business, so they can keep going, so they can keep receiving funding or whatever it may be.
But the problem is, Glenn, there's not a lot of lobbyists here for regular Mr. and Mrs. American, you know, like mom and pop shops, the single mom trying to make it, that the guy, the average white male trying to climb the corporate ladder when his problem is being a white male. So, there's that people in here fighting for regular Americans, you just have lobbyists fighting for big corporations and industries. And so that's one layer of the problem. The other layer of the problem is the nature of this job. It keeps members of Congress and senators in Washington so much of the time, too much of the time, to be honest with you, that we don't get to go home and spend more time with our families, our friends, you know, all in our district, or maybe just be "regular" people because this job is so demanding and it's turned into practically year around. And for those of us in the House of Representatives, we have to run for Congress every two years. So, you're practically campaigning nearly the entire time that you're here serving as a representative. So that's just a couple of examples that I can give you that I believe is a recipe for disaster. And that's how people just fall into this social club. I would call it a social club here in Washington, D.C.
Now, for me, I have no interest in that. I really don't. And I'll tell you why. Becoming a member of Congress has made my life miserable. I made a lot more money before I got here. I've lost money since I've gotten here. I have people come up to me and say crazy things to me out of the blue, in public places, that they believe because they read it on the Internet or saw it on some news show about me. So, it's not a life that I think is like something that I enjoy because I don't enjoy it. But I'm committed to this job because I believe in it. I sincerely believe that the federal government is failing the American people so badly, like so badly that it disgusts me every single day. And I like to solve problems. That's who I am. I like to fix it. And I honestly hate the two-party system. I really do. People don't understand that about me. But I really hate the two-party system because it creates a divide in Congress and it takes away from the fact that we should just be working for all Americans. And that may surprise people to hear me say that. But I do believe that we should be working for all Americans because – guess what? – this is all of our country. And so, I'm not interested in being co-opted or changing the way I do things. As a matter of fact, that would upset me because I wouldn't sleep well at night. And I really do enjoy getting good sleep at night.
G. Greenwald: Yeah. You know, I've told this story before, but I remember when I was working with Edward Snowden in Hong Kong, an incredibly stressful moment, we had no idea whether at any moment Chinese authorities or Hong Kong authorities or the CIA were going to bust down the door and none of us could sleep – the journalists working with him. But every night at 10 p.m. he said, "Hey, guys, I'm going to hit the hay." He went to bed and slept like a baby. And at one point I finally asked him, you know, how are you able to do this when all of us can barely get an hour of sleep, even with sleeping aids? And he said because there's nothing like having a clean conscience that lets you sleep at night. And even though he's an exile, I always say he's probably the most internally peaceful and fulfilled person I know, despite these material deprivations.
I don't want to spend a lot of time on the whole what ended up, I think, being more of a drama over the House speakership fight but I do want to ask you a couple of questions about it while I have you. To begin with, I did start noticing even before the Republicans gained control of Congress, that Kevin McCarthy was saying things about you along the lines of, "look, you may not like it, you may like it, the reality is Marjorie Taylor Greene speaks for millions of people within our party and deserves the platform that goes along with that." He obviously was opposed to stripping you of committees, at least while he was saying those sorts of things. The people who are kind of the holdouts to Kevin McCarthy were people who are typically aligned with you, or that's the perception at least, and some people were surprised that you weren't one of them. They ended up getting some concessions in exchange for ultimately allowing Kevin McCarthy to become the Speaker. I'm just wondering either informally or formally, was your willingness to support Kevin McCarthy as speaker based on your perception that he would allow you to do the things that you felt you wanted to do or at least give you the space and the power in order to do them?
Rep. Greene: Well, I think what people can take away from it is the fact that I supported Kevin McCarthy going into that Speaker's vote is that I will make decisions independently, that I'm not going to make decisions because my group of friends or the Freedom Caucus or the people I normally vote with are planning to do something. I will take and weigh all the information that I have, and I'll make that decision on my own. And I'm willing to do that at all times. It doesn't matter what the issue is, what the votes are going to be, what the bill is, I will continue to do that and I'll do what I believe is the right thing. And so, I had a different path than the 20 that opposed Kevin McCarthy going into January 3rd. My path was this: I had gotten kicked off a committee.
One of the things I had been told by a lot of people is that it was Kevin McCarthy that kicked me off. But I found out – and it was well over a year after I had been here – from Devin Nunes, one night we were at a party and I found out from him that, in fact, that was not true because he was in the room when it happened and Kevin McCarthy was very angry and was screaming at Steny Hoyer over the fact that they were going to kick me off of committees and told them there's going to be paybacks and we won't forget this once you start this process, he said, we will continue it. And sure enough, everybody saw what happened. He removed Adam Schiff, and Eric Swalwell from the Intel committees. And we are getting ready to remove Ilhan Omar from Foreign Affairs for anti-Semitic comments and stances and views towards Israel. And so Kevin McCarthy held true to his word. But another thing that I did that was different from not having committees is I spent a lot of time on the House floor. And I really feel like I learned how Congress works. And I watch committees and I was able to observe and learn probably more than any member of Congress has ever been able to do.
But I also went and talked to Kevin McCarthy, which was something different that none of them ever did. They more assumed his opinion, assumed his stances, and grew in their belief that he would be a bad Speaker and wouldn't be conservative, wouldn't put America First and they chose to oppose him, where I spent months and months going to meet with him and talk to him because I truly felt like, okay, I need to be talking to leadership and I need to tell leadership exactly how regular Americans think and feel and tell them, here's what's important. This is what we believe. This is what we want. And so, I had developed a relationship with Kevin McCarthy by going to him and sometimes fighting with him, sometimes arguing with him, but really earning his ear and his trust and explaining to him, here's what America First looks like. This is what MAGA Republicans feel like. This is what small business owners think and feel. This is what's important to my district. This is what's important for traditional values and conservatives. And then I would say, here's what I think we need to do. I give my opinion on a lot of things. But I also got to hear back from him, Glenn, and that's how you make a decision on whether you're going to support someone: you watch their actions, you listen to their words, you develop a relationship, and then you make your decision.
But there's something also very important that most people don't realize. I also knew there was nothing to gain by opposing Kevin McCarthy. As a matter of fact, I knew there was a lot at risk. We could risk losing the gavel to the Democrats or to more of a Uniparty group from Democrats and Republicans, that could pull together and get 218 members on their own and elect someone for Speaker that none of us really want except that big moderate group. And to me, that was reckless and dangerous because we worked very hard to earn the majority and after two years without committees, you know what? I wanted the gavel and I wanted the gavel to belong to someone that I could support and someone that would help me and listen to me achieve the things over the next two years that I believe will help us win the White House and help us get control of the Senate so that we can truly make real changes to get things done. And so that's how my decision process worked. And so, once I get into something, I'm going to fight like hell for it. And I fought to support Kevin McCarthy, and it seemed like an unpopular thing to do. But I think people are realizing that I made the right choice and they're finding out that Kevin McCarthy is not Mitch McConnell and he's going to do a good job for us.
G. Greenwald: So you mentioned the Ilhan Omar thing, and I want to actually ask you about that in just a second but before I get to that, just to kind of sum this all up, I realize you made a different choice than the 20 holdouts. I've heard you before, and again, you explained your reasoning. I think it's very clear, regardless of whether people agree with it or not. But what I do want to ask is that there were some concessions that were ultimately extracted in exchange for letting him ascend to the House speakership – but this was five days that didn't go on for weeks. It was just a few days that were designed to decentralize the decision-making process. And this kind of grip, the stranglehold that party leadership has had on Congress going back to the days of Paul Ryan and then John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi, all of whom basically stripped individual members of any kind of real power, at least some of these procedural changes and concessions restored to individual members, some power. Do you acknowledge or agree with the view that some of those concessions that they extracted did end up having real value?
Rep. Greene: Well, actually, let me give a little information on that. All the agreements that came together on our rules package happened all before January 3. So, I supported our Freedom Caucus rules package and we worked with leadership and we worked in our conference. And all of those meetings and votes happened before the very first Speaker vote on January 3. As a matter of fact, the rules package was printed on January 1, ok?, and then the final printed version of the rules package on January 6, when we took our bill, I guess it was early hours, January 7, our 15th round where we finally voted and established Kevin McCarthy speakership. The only change in the rules package from January 1, all the way to January 6, during that big week fight from January 3 to January 7, early a.m. was one thing.
One thing I'm not kidding you. It's like 55 pages both times. But the only change was it took the motion to vacate from 5 members to 1 member. That was it. So, people don't understand that. All of that, the debate and coming to this where we were returning power to members of the House and taking it away from leadership and taking the appropriation bills to 12 separate bills and all these wonderful things that happened, that all of that was done before January 3. The only thing that happened that week was a change in motion to vacate from five members to one. But there were a lot of meetings behind closed doors, and there were things requested that I didn't agree with. Those are the backroom deal-type things that I never was a part of. And, you know, they might have gotten some of them, but none of that is public.
G. Greenwald: All right. So, let's talk about the question of whether Ilhan Omar should be taken off the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Kevin McCarthy promised that he would remove Adam Schiff, for example, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee or ranking member, because he clearly lied to the public repeatedly and abused his position by doing so, vesting a lot of lies and conspiracy theories with the kind of aura of credibility that comes from that position. He constantly leaked classified information from political reasons to CNN and a bunch of other outlets. So, there's a clear reason why you would remove Adam Schiff from this committee. When it comes to Ilhan Omar, it seems as if the argument for removing her from the House Foreign Affairs Committee is similar to the argument that was made by Democrats for why you should be stripped from your committee positions, namely not that she abused her power or engaged in ethical violations – but instead that she expressed views that a lot of people dislike. And I want to just show you – you probably already saw it but for our audience – what Matt Gaetz said, a few days ago, in an interview about why he's at least not yet willing to support the campaign to remove Ilhan Omar from this committee. And I want to hear your reaction to it.
(Video 42:16)
Rep. Matt Gaetz on Newsmax: So, let's go ahead and show that Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell are dangerous to our country. They lied about intelligence. They created a structure of leaks and then embroidered those leaks on to other lies. You just saw Adam Schiff lying about his contact with whistleblowers. Even CNN had to recognize that point. But I have to tell you, Jen, I view the Schiff and Swalwell matter somewhat differently than I view the Ilhan Omar matter. Ilhan Omar didn't lie about our intelligence agencies. She didn't say that Trump was a Russian agent based on information from a particular committee that was just totally bogus. The reason I think a lot of Republicans want to kick Ilhan Omar off of the Foreign Affairs Committee is that they don't like what she has to say. And like I was just saying.
Newsmax: She should have remained on.
Rep. Matt Gaetz on Newsmax: That, well, I'm undecided on that question because the Democrats moved the Overton window. And I do believe Speaker McCarthy deserves deference. And so I want to hear him out. But I am undecided as of tonight as to whether or not I would vote to remove Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee, because it's one thing to do dangerous things to the country with intelligence, it's quite another to say, I don't like your viewpoint and thus I want to remove you. I don't support that with Direct TV and Newsmax, I didn't support it when it was directed at my friend and colleague Marjorie Taylor Greene, and it makes me uncomfortable that the case against Ilhan Omar, you know, isn't being subjected to any due process.
G. Greenwald: Do you see any validity to that argument?
M. Greene: No, I don't. And I'll tell you why. There's a major difference. Number one, I was removed from all committees, not allowed to serve on any committee in the House of Representatives for so-called comments and things on Facebook or social media before I ever became a candidate for Congress. But Omar is quite a different case. All of her statements and views have been made as a sitting member of Congress, and that's where it poses a problem. And her stances and views towards Israel are dangerous, very dangerous for the Foreign Affairs Committee because that committee does deal with Israel. And her support for Hamas, her support for terrorist organizations against Israel is not the type of viewpoint. And that's not what we should see out of members of Congress for the United States sitting on the Foreign Affairs Committee. And then the other differences. Guess what? Democrats can assign her to any other committee in the House of Representatives, just not the Foreign Affairs Committee. So, it's a night and day difference between how they treated me and what we are doing with Ilhan Omar and my friend Matt Gaetz, who I really like and admire, he's just wrong. But I will tell you, I'm pretty sure Matt Gaetz is going to be voting to remove Omar when we take that to the floor.
G. Greenwald: That could definitely be the case. Let me just probe a little bit more on that, because you did mention Ilhan Omar, and his views with respect to Israel. Regardless of one's views on Israel, Israel is a foreign country. It's not part of the United States. It's actually a foreign country. A lot of Israelis have a better quality of life than a lot of our fellow citizens of the United States. Israel is a major recipient of enormous amounts of U.S. aid in the billions and billions and billions of dollars range that Obama signed with Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Even if you support U.S. aid to Israel and can reconcile that with an America First ideology – which I want to talk about in a second, what that means – surely it has to be the prerogative of a member of Congress to be able to question whether that policy is the right one or even to oppose it without being punished. Isn't that something that we want to foster in Congress and our country generally, which is the ability to express views that others disagree with without being punished for them?
Rep. Greene: Yeah, absolutely. But I don't think it should be views expressed through hatred or any type of negative feeling towards a country based on their identity. And that's the problem with Omar. You know, it's one thing for her to say we shouldn't be sending foreign aid or something like that. But that's not her view. Her views are negative. Her views are more anti-Israel because it's Israel, because of Palestine and that situation that lies there. But it's not one of more freedom of speech with policy. So that's a clear difference. Ilhan Omar is also someone that supported bailing out criminal rioters, Antifa, BLM rioters that were burning down American cities during the summer of 2020 and her daughter was involved with those riots on the ground. So, I mean, we can go further. We can talk about the fact that she married her brother, and broke immigration laws, and that's something I think we should look into. So. So, in my opinion, Glenn, there's a lot more we should be doing with Ilhan Omar than just removing her from foreign affairs. But that's the offer that's on the table. So that's the only one that I can talk about at this time.
G. Greenwald: Yes. There's something we're going to have to leave to the side with a lot of disagreement, I think. I think we could at least agree that before someone can be treated as guilty of a crime or punished as a crime, they need due process. They need to be charged with that crime, given a trial. None of this has happened in her case with respect to things like immigration.
So let me ask you the broader question, though, which relates to the question that I raised about Israel, but just in a much broader way, leaving Israel to the side In 2016, people forget that one of the things that Donald Trump actually did that got him not just elected president, but first, the nomination of his own party, was he ran against the establishment ideology of not just the Democratic Party, but also the Republican Party. And he did so in almost every sector – economic policy, trade policy, but particularly foreign policy, arguing that we should stop going around the world in changing other people's governments to try and make them better. But rather than have me describe what you regard as America First ideology when it comes to foreign policy, what do you understand that to be? And which parts of his critiques of Republican orthodoxy did you agree with on foreign policy?
Rep. Greene: Well, I have America First views because of my life, because of my life experience. And that's why I supported President Trump because what I've lived and what I see, where I'm from in Georgia, and also all over America is that it's very sad. So, let's talk about that for a few minutes. You know, decades ago, the leaders in Washington joined together with big corporations and started to make trade deals. And this is what led to many of our manufacturing jobs, blue-collar jobs being sent overseas to foreign countries where they started manufacturing goods. And guess what? Manufacturing plants, steel plants, and many types of great American jobs disappeared and those manufacturing plants shut down. And so that affected every rural part of America.
And small-town America today is suffering from that. And that's where America lost policies. So where big corporations made big profits on slave labor and cheap labor overseas, Americans here at home lost their jobs. And here's the result of that, Glenn. That meant that the breadwinner of the family, the father of the family, lost his job, came back home to his family and had a very difficult time replacing that salary and replacing that job because there weren't jobs that really exist anywhere in small town USA. And so, there's devastating things that happen from that. I mean, we're talking about divorce, alcoholism, depression. People just didn't recover over the past decades.
And then you combine that and, Glenn, this is where we probably agree, the never-ending foreign wars added to that. And this is where our sons, brothers, cousins, fathers, uncles, all friends were shipped overseas, fought in these foreign wars, and then came back home, damaged goods and addicted to opioids and then drug use and suicide. And that also affected small-town America, because not only did you have families that got broken through a divorce or just never recovered from losing these jobs, their sons were addicted to drugs; kids just got confused. And small-town America basically rots away. And so if you drive through my district or you drive through rural America, you drive through any small town in the United States and you're going to see Main Street USA with a lot of empty storefronts, a lot of very sad people, very, very poor people, and a lot of people that don't have hope anymore. And when President Trump ran for president in 2016, that was something that he understood and talked about. And that's why average Americans, people like me, and people all over America supported his America First message. That's what I believe in.
I believe we have to fight for the regular American. We have to fight to revitalize small-town America. We have to fight to bring hope back. We have to fight to bring jobs back. We have to actually care about our country and our people. And you can't put a political party on that and you can't put an identity on that or an ideology. It's very simple. It's just loving your country, loving your neighbor, loving one another, and wanting all of us to succeed. And the way to make that happen is to put our country first. It's very simple. America First. That's what Make America Great Again really means. And it's not something to be afraid of or hated. It's actually something that all of us should embrace. And it is certainly something that I believe in.
G. Greenwald: So, let's talk about a couple of specific examples of where that ideology, as you described it, manifests. You have been certainly one of the most vocal opponents of the Biden White House's war policy in Ukraine, namely sending tens of billions of dollars with seemingly no end in sight, increasingly sophisticated weaponry, almost no safeguards, which isn't really even the Biden White House policy. It's the policy of both parties. And even Joe Biden himself says that the world is closer to nuclear annihilation right now as a result of the U.S. role in that war and the possibility of direct military confrontation with Russia than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, where the two countries really came close to blowing up the entire planet. For years. Obama even was saying, 'Why would we go to war with Russia or risk conflict with Russia over Ukraine? It has nothing in it that is of any interest to the American people', even those horrible Middle East wars, at least there was oil there. There was like a rational reason why the U.S. would be interested there. How do you explain the fact that 100%, the Democratic Party, and 80% of your party is willing to pour gigantic sums of money into this war to risk all kinds of very dangerous implications, given all the suffering you just described in our country over Ukraine. Being in the middle of it, what do you think explains that?
Rep. Greene: Well, again, there's a lot of layers to that. And I'll tell you one thing is war is big business. That's what it's always about. And it usually involves energy. The Middle Eastern wars were all about oil, but guess what? In Ukraine, they possess a lot of rare earth minerals, and those are very valuable now, especially with the climate agenda that we're seeing all over the world, especially out of the Democrat Party. Another thing is the military-industrial complex. Guess what? When we have a war going on, we get to manufacture weapons. We get to manufacture military equipment, and we keep that industry warmed up and cooking and they make a lot of money. We also sharpen up our military and they get to try out different exercises and war plans. And so, you see there's many things that happen across the board when there's a war going on and they get to practice it in another country that's not here at home. And you see, I think this is something that's a major problem. I do believe in having a very strong military. As a matter of fact, I want America's military to be the strongest in the world because I'm concerned about China.
But I think what we're doing is reckless. It's endangering lives all over the world with this war in Ukraine. I think it's wrong. I think Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. And I think Zelensky is not the person we should be supporting. Ukraine is not the 51st state of America. Ukraine is a foreign country and it's very far away from home. There's other things that I believe in. I believe we are going down a path that I'm not sure we're going to turn around from. There's a lot of egos that are posturing in this. And they've gotten themselves pretty far out there. And here we are. We just sent tanks over to Ukraine and now they want F-16 fighter jets. And what are they going to want next and where will it stop? And there's a bunch of them saying that they'll stop at nothing. And that is like blind fools driving our ship and guaranteeing and controlling our future. The other reason why I was against the war in Ukraine is because I knew it was going to drive inflation and I knew it was going to hurt poor people all over the world. And we've seen that happen. Inflation has gone up, energy costs have gone up, the price of food has gone up. And that hurts everyone. It doesn't help anyone. It hurts everyone. But Russia has proven something that I also warned everyone about. Russia has proven that they don't need the United States to make trades.
They don't need the United States to sell their oil and natural gas. And that is another dangerous thing that Russia proved to the world that's going to hurt the United States of America because the dollar has been the world currency but Russia has shown in its trade with China and other countries that they're willing to sell oil and natural gas and they won't have to use the dollar. They can pick and choose which currency they want to use. So, I think the leaders here in Washington and the neocons and everyone involved and war games and Russia are endangering not only our lives, but they're endangering our economy and they're endangering the entire world while China is rising, Glenn. China has the fastest growing military in world history, and China is serious about what they're doing and they don't have to get it done tomorrow or next week. They're willing to wait years to get it done, and they are not deterred one single bit, while we're over here in the United States with our political pendulum, if you will, swinging back and forth between right and left. So, I think the United States needs to get a serious grip on reality. We need to get Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table for peace. We need to end it. And we need to turn our focus on the Mexican cartels who are murdering Americans every single day.
G. Greenwald: Right. So let me see. You mentioned China several times on that question, and I'm glad you did, because whenever I point out that the energy behind opposing American interventionism, American wars, is actually much more on the populist right than on the populous left, the argument I'll hear is, no, that is a fraudulent agenda they're selling. They're not actually opposed to going to war with other countries. They're just angry that we're at war with the wrong country. They want to stop the war in Russia. So, they can actually go have a war with China. And they say they're opposed to preventing Russia from taking over Crimea, that that shouldn't be our business. And yet they're willing to go to war with China in order to protect Taiwan, which is also a foreign country, not the 51st state on the other side of the world. Is there any circumstance in which you would defend – other than, of course, a direct attack by the Chinese government on America or its people around the world – is there any circumstance in which you would actually support a direct hot war between the United States and China, including China's potential invasion of Taiwan?
Rep. Greene: I hope we never see anything like that ever happen. I think that we're looking at World War III, if that were to happen and the problem that we have is what I started with – when I said - decades ago they sent our jobs overseas so we wouldn't have to be concerned about defending Taiwan if we had our manufacturing if we had our critical supplies and if we had many of the things that we depend on, like microchips made right here in the United States, we wouldn't have to worry about any of this and we wouldn't worry about China either. And that's what I think that America needs to do. We need to turn inward and we need to look at ourselves when it does. We need to make things here in the United States so that we don't have to look at China and worry about what they're doing. So, we don't have to watch Taiwan, we don't have to worry about Ukraine. Of course, we don't want to see wars erupting all over the world.
And we hate seeing innocent lives being murdered. But we have serious problems right here that we should be focusing all of our energy on, so that we don't have to be so concerned about what's happening and in the political and military landscape of other countries. No, I don't want to support a war with China because I don't want to see one ever erupt because we are a nuclear power and so is China. And that's bad for every single person all over the world, just like it is with Russia and the United States. But we have to be realistic about what China says. You see, we should listen to our enemies and believe them when they say it.
China says that they want to be the number one world superpower, both economically and militarily, and they really mean that. So, we have to take them seriously and we have to be prepared if something terrible were to happen. And I hope it really never does. But again, Glenn, I'll go back to – I'm more concerned about three people down in Walker County, in Georgia, in my district from fentanyl poisonings this week, then than I am concerned about what's happening in Ukraine or possibly, God forbid, China ever, ever, you know, doing anything to provoke the United States. I seriously think and I warn everyone here in Washington, we need to turn inward here in America and start solving our own problems and putting our country first. Because when we do that – then guess what? – we're independent and we're more powerful than ever before.
G. Greenwald: Yeah, if we were independent in terms of microchips and the like, Taiwan would be a lot less important to the United States strategically.
We just have a few minutes left, there are a couple of topics, though, that I have to ask you about in these few minutes. So let me do that. I want to be very respectful of your time. First of all, when it comes to the abuse of Big Tech, I think it's very interesting that in Washington – I think on a bipartisan basis – people are finally coming to the realization that these companies are way too powerful to be reconcilable with a healthy democracy. Obviously, there are different concerns that people have, conservatives there tend to be more concerned about their power to censor, whereas Democrats are concerned about the economic power and this monopolistic ability. So, I just want to ask you a couple of specific questions about what you support in terms of reining them in.
Just this week, the Biden administration sued Google, asking that their advertising business be broken off from Google, a similar lawsuit to the one that the Trump DOJ brought in 2020 about Google search engines. There's also legislation pending in both the House and the Senate with bipartisan support to rein in their monopolistic powers to break them up. Obviously, in Republican politics, it used to be almost gospel that the government should just let big corporations do whatever they want. The government has no role in interfering in big business. What is your view in terms of what are acceptable means to start trying to control and constrain this seemingly endless expansion of Big Tech power?
Rep. Greene: Well, I'll start from a big picture. Big picture point of view of mine is we need to get the politics out of big corporations. That's a major problem. There's too much political alignment with our government and many big corporations, not just Big Tech. We're talking about many corporations where we see political policy forced on employees and customers when really these big corporations should just worry about doing a good job for their customer and leaving their political beliefs to the side and their political donations in their own wallets, not involving their companies. That's the big-picture view. But as far as Big Tech is concerned, we need to see the government and Big Tech break up, and the intelligence community and Big Tech break up. I have a bill that I introduced last Congress that Senator Hagerty introduced in the Senate. And what our bill does and it's really good because of their companion bills. If we got one in the House and one in the Senate that is the same and they're going to do a good job, then we can get it passed and hopefully have a president that will sign it into law. But what it can do, what we want to do is we want to get rid of section 230, number one.
The second thing I want to see happen is I want to see Big Tech treated like a common carrier. Common carriers are like cell phone companies, telephone companies. FedEx is a common carrier. And what common carriers do is they treat every single customer the same. And it would stop censorship. And we need to end political censorship on these platforms where people's First Amendment is protected and their freedom of speech is protected as well. At the same time, we need to make sure there aren't things on there like child porn and dangerous criminals and terrorists, and so forth. I think that's important to watch out for those bad actors and immoral filth as well. But this bill would do a lot and it would go a long ways. And I think the biggest thing, again, is to break up the government and Big Tech and make sure that those two stay away from each other.
G. Greenwald: So last question, which is, you know, it's been a focus of mine pretty much from the moment I began writing about politics and doing journalism, which was the abuses of the U.S. security state, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, all of those agencies with this incredible power they have to operate in the dark to interfere in our domestic politics, to really operate without any constraints of any kind. Obviously, in 2005, when I began writing, it was at the height of the War on Terror, the idea was just to give them all the power they want. I feel like I'm living in this bizarre, surreal, twisted dream where it used to be a staple of liberal politics to oppose these institutions. And throughout the Cold War, they were more or less revered by the American right. And everything is now shifted where the only kind of skepticism and opposition and concern about these agencies comes from your sector of the Republican Party. Just talk a little bit about whether the skepticism was always something that you had toward these agencies or if there are things recently that have caused it. And what do you hope to see with things like this new Church Committee and other ways to finally rein in the power of these agencies that have plagued us since the end of World War II?
Rep. Greene: Well, Glenn, I really feel like our intelligence agencies and our Department of Justice and FBI, certain parts of them, have become weaponized against the American people, and they're extremely dangerous. I also think there's parts of our intelligence community more interested in globalization and global politics than they ever cared about politics for the United States. And they've forgotten who pays their paychecks and funds or agencies, and that's the American taxpayer. And I think that's extremely dangerous. It's hard for me to understand how we're living in a time where Congress – we can't rein them in and we can't really control them. And they're continuing down the path that they're going down, regardless of who tells them to stop, especially the American people who they should be serving. So, I think this is a dangerous time in our country. And I agree with you. These agencies have grown so big and powerful that they're more of a government of their own. And when that gets to be the case, we're all in trouble. And I don't think any agency that operates through our government or from our government should ever have a budget that nobody can see. I think that's another big, big problem. And I don't like that very much at all….
G. Greenwald: It's a parallel….
Rep. Greene: Well I would also say we do need intelligence agencies? There is a role that they play, of course. And it would be naive to ignore that. And we do need a Justice Department and we need an FBI that goes after the bad guys. So, there's that fine line, right? But what we've seen is a major shift where the average agent is the ones out in the field. You know, there are still some good guys left, but guess what? They're either at retirement age or a few years past it. And the new generation that's come in is very woke. And they don't believe like most Americans believe. As a matter of fact, they're buying into the things that are being taught to them and trained into them – that is the very problem.
G. Greenwald: Yeah, this is just the real last question, which is a major reason we know about these agencies in the last decade or so is because of whistleblowers who have been willing to sacrifice their own personal freedom to tell Americans what they've been doing to in particular Julian Assange, who's rotting away in a prison and Edward Snowden, who is exiled in Russia, are two people whom you have spoken out in support of, have asked for or urged a pardon of. What is it that led you to do that? Why do you think that what they did was more of a public service than something that deserves punishment?
Rep. Greene: Well, I believe that any time you see someone risking their life to tell the truth about an issue, being a real whistleblower, that's a person that is using an extreme amount of courage. But when you see the government come down on them trying to silence them – like you mentioned Julian Assange rotting away in prison – they're basically slowly murdering him. But that's when we see real danger there, when a government is trying to stop the truth from being told to its people, that's something to pay attention to. And I think we need to protect our whistleblowers. We need to protect the media who are willing to publish those stories that need to be told to the people. Because, after all, that's what freedom of the press is all about. And I truly support it. And I know that sounds kind of funny, Glenn, because I've been persecuted by the press. I've been demonized by the press, but I'm probably one of the few members of Congress that would fight harder than anyone to protect the freedom that the press has here in the United States because I believe in it. And I think we have to do everything we can to protect those whistleblowers who are risking their lives to tell the truth.
G. Greenwald: So, I really want to thank you. I think these kinds of conversations where you can take the time to delve into things deeply are way more illuminating than little 3-minute-heads or having people hear about you from organizations paid to distort what you're saying. There was a lot we didn't get to and II would love to have you back. We're going to be hectoring you and pursuing you to have you come back on the show. But I really enjoyed the discussion. Thanks so much for taking the time.
M. Greene: Thank you, Glenn. I appreciate it.
G. Greenwald: Have a great evening. Bye.
M. Greene: You, too.
So that concludes our show for tonight. We are thrilled to have been able to spend an hour talking to the congresswoman about some incredibly important issues. The idea of the show is to avoid the constraints of cable news that require everything to be said in 30 seconds or 60 seconds or at most, 90 seconds, and to take the time to delve in. I wish we had had more time, actually, because there were a lot of things I would have liked to have pressed further on and raised with her. But we will definitely be asking the congresswoman back on, as well as a lot of other people in her position as well.
Thank all of you for continuing to watch. The success of the show is enabling us to get more gas and to continue doing the kind of journalism we want to do. We really appreciate your tuning in and hope you will come back tomorrow night and every night at 7:00 pm EST, exclusively on Rumble.
Have a great evening.
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