Greene defends move to oust Speaker Johnson

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Sunday defended her move to oust Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) over the bipartisan spending deal.

Greene filed a motion to vacate the Speakership against Johnson on Friday as the House voted to pass a $1.2 trillion spending package to keep the government open. She said at the time that the move was a “warning” and did not put a timeline on when she would bring it to the floor for a vote.

“Americans are sick and tired of failure in the House of Representatives. We are barely hanging on to our republic, a nation in debt with over $34 trillion in debt,” she said on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

“And we cannot have a Republican Speaker of the House that is willing to do the bidding of Chuck Schumer, handing over the gavel to him, and letting him pass the Schumer House bill on the floor, and not allowing any of us Republicans to do our jobs,” she added, referring to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

She reiterated that Johnson broke the 72-hour rule set by the GOP conference with former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and only gave them a day to read the spending bill. She said Sunday that the spending bill won’t address issues at the border.

“But yet, this week, Speaker Johnson, who has barely been a Speaker for six months, led us to a complete catastrophe,” she said.

“He passed a giant omnibus bill, the second part of it, this week on Friday after breaking the 72-hour rule, only giving Republicans a day to read 1,012 pages, and not allowing us to pass amendments to make any changes to this bill, which Chuck Schumer had stuck full of a Democrat wish list and kept the Biden catastrophe border policies going.”

Greene also said that filing this motion gives the Republicans time to find a new Speaker since she has not brought it to the floor yet.

“This may take weeks. It may take months. It may not even happen until next Congress, but Speaker Johnson cannot remain as speaker of the House. Speaker Johnson has also failed our majority because he is allowing Mike Gallagher to leave Congress after the deadline date, where his district cannot hold a special election and elect a new representative for the rest of this entire Congress,” she said, referring to the Republican representative from Wisconsin.

The Hill has reached out to Johnson’s office for comment.