A lesson for reporters on Capitol Hill: If you press Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on her opposition to U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, she may threaten to call the police on you.
It happened to me this week.
The scene unfolded following a vote on Tuesday in the House of Representatives. Greene and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky were talking and walking from the Capitol toward a House office building. The two representatives have been lonely GOP voices against last weekend’s U.S. strikes against Iran, so I sidled up alongside them to ask if they felt like a caucus of two inside the Republican party.
“No, we don’t feel like a caucus of two,” Greene replied. But she didn’t name other Republican members of Congress who shared her views.
The main question I wanted to ask Greene was about a curious claim she made on social media earlier in the week. Back in 2021, Greene hit President Joe Biden for “doing nothing” in response to Iranian enrichment of uranium besides trying to re-enter former President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, but she now suggests the strike on Iran was done solely to advance the interests of Israel: “I don’t know anyone in America who has been the victim of a crime or killed by Iran, but I know many people who have been victims of crime committed by criminal illegal aliens or MURDERED by Cartel and Chinese fentanyl/drugs,” Greene tweeted on Sunday. The Iranian regime has been responsible for many American deaths over the years: 241 dead U.S. service members killed in the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983; 19 dead American airmen in the Khobar Towers bombing of 1996; more than 600 dead U.S. troops in Iraq; and at least 40 Americans murdered in Israel on October 7, 2023.
“I was talking about on our homeland,” Greene told me at the Capitol on Tuesday when asked about American deaths at the hands of Iranians. “There’s been plenty of, unfortunately, great men and women in our military who were sent to fight foreign wars, by our government, that have been injured and killed by Iran.” At its founding, of course, the Iranian regime invaded sovereign U.S. soil—the U.S. Embassy in Tehran—and held Americans hostage. In recent years, it has plotted assassination attempts on U.S. soil—including, according to the Department of Justice, against Donald Trump.
Greene said she’d tell the family members of Americans killed by Iran: “It’s terrible. It’s absolutely terrible.”
Then I asked Greene if the Iranian attacks on Americans demonstrated that the United States had national interest in the strike against Iran—that it wasn’t simply done to advance the interests of Israel, as Greene now claims. By this point, Greene was furious at my questioning. “Your goal is to attack me and twist my words,” she said.
I tried to ask Greene two more times if Iranian attacks on Americans proved the U.S. had a national interest in striking Iran’s nuclear facilities. Greene deflected and interrupted each time. “I’m done talking to you,” she said. “You know what? I’m going to go tell the Capitol police you’re harassing me.”
The exchange occurred in a hallway (connecting the Capitol to a House office building) where credentialed members of the congressional press corps have every right to ask members of Congress questions—including follow-up questions, no matter how annoying those questions may be. Members of Congress, of course, have every right to dodge, deflect, and stonewall in response to reporters’ questions—no matter how cowardly such evasions may be. (Greene’s accusation that public policy questions constituted harassment is especially risible, given her history of chasing down a teenage victim of the Parkland school shooting.)
But the story here isn’t simply another example of Greene’s absurd behavior but of how isolated someone like Greene is inside the Republican Party on matters related to Israel and Iran.
Greene is a member of the MAGA elite: She is almost invariably in lockstep with Donald Trump, who hailed her as a rising star in the GOP from the time she won a House primary in 2020. She hobnobbed with Trump and Tucker Carlson at Trump’s golf course, and she’s now trying to downplay her split with Trump. “MTG ❤️ DJT,” she wrote on X on Monday.
A CBS/YouGov poll found that while Republicans overall supported U.S. strike on Iran by 85 percent to 15 percent, self-described “MAGA Republicans” backed the strike by an even more lopsided 94 percent to 6 percent. Greene is standing with the 6 percent of MAGA Republicans, while pretending that cohort is much larger than it is. “My office is being flooded with phone calls from not only Republicans but also many Democrats thanking me for taking a stand against U.S. involvement in Israel’s war against Iran,” Greene wrote on X on Wednesday. Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the staunchly MAGA House Freedom Caucus, told me on Tuesday he was unaware of House Republicans who shared Greene’s position when I asked him: “No, I think most people realize we had to stop Iran’s nuclear capability.” Harris said of the strike: “It was great.”
There is plenty of room for good-faith disagreement on the wisdom and legality of the strike against Iran. Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul said congressional authorization was necessary for such a strike, and he warned the attack would make a long-term diplomatic deal less likely. “I think it’s unknown,” Paul told me earlier this week when asked to assess whether the strike was successful. “It’s unknown how Iran will react. Iran may well act in a chastened way and say, ‘We give up, and we’re going to be part of the civilized world,’ or they may sprint towards the nuclear bomb.”
But what makes Greene unusual inside the congressional GOP is her dismissal of the Iranian threat and her contempt for Israel. Following the strike on Iran, Greene floated a conspiracy theory that Israel had assassinated President John F. Kennedy. “There was once a great President that the American people loved. He opposed Israel’s nuclear program. And then he was assassinated,” Greene wrote on X on Tuesday. “I oppose war including wars Israel wages. Should I feel that my life is in danger now too?”
This wasn’t the first time Greene had promoted an antisemitic conspiracy theory. Before taking office, Greene suggested the Rothschild family was funding sex-trafficking and possibly started California wildfires with a laser from space. After taking office, Greene spoke in 2022 at a conference hosted by a well-known Holocaust-denier who had called a writer a “race traitor” because he “work[s] for Jews.” Earlier this month, Greene was one of two members of Congress who voted “present” on a resolution condemning antisemitism following a terrorist attack against Jewish Americans in Colorado. “Antisemitic hate crimes are wrong, but so are all hate crimes. Yet Congress never votes on hate crimes committed against white people, Christians, men, the homeless, or countless others,” Greene wrote following the vote on the antisemitism resolution. The only other member of Congress who voted “present” was Democrat Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, who, in November 2023 was censured by the House for making false claims about Israel and using a slogan effectively calling for the destruction of Israel.
So, following the U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, it’s not precisely accurate to say that Greene is a member of a two-person caucus inside the congressional GOP. On matters related to Israel and Jews, she’s in a class all by herself.
