Marjorie Taylor Greene, tearing into her own party, says GOP men in Congress are ‘weak’

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) spent part of last week fielding angry texts from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana).

She posted on social media that the Senate should abolish the 60-vote filibuster threshold so senators can end the government shutdown with just Republican votes. “He told me they can’t do it and it’s math,” Greene said.

As with many things Johnson says these days, Greene disagreed.

“I sent him the article about them doing it yesterday,” she said, referring to the Senate changing its own rules to confirm a large group of nominees on a single vote. “I said, ‘They just did it.’” (Johnson told reporters on Friday that he called her and they had a “good discussion” as “colleagues and friends.”)

Greene, an antiestablishment outsider who became a close ally to the president, is used to conflict with leaders of her own party. She unsuccessfully tried to force a vote to remove Johnson from his leadership post in 2024,and she was openly critical of former speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) before she and McCarthy forged an alliance.

Now, she’s on what some Republicans see as a media blitz from hell.

She’s torching the speaker’s shutdown strategy in cable news interviews, siding with Democrats to call for extensions to health care subsidies, and supporting an effort both Johnson and President Donald Trump oppose to force a vote on releasing files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Greene’s sharpest attacks also reflect some disillusionment with how she and other conservative women in Congress have been treated in recent months. She said she sees a pattern of unfair treatment in which competent and tough women such as herself and Rep. Elise Stefanik (New York) have been punished or ignored while “weak” Republican men are rewarded.

Trump has stocked his Cabinet with women, including the third woman to lead the Justice Department and the first to serve as chief of staff, she noted. But in the GOP-controlled House, just one woman chairs a committee, and just three serve in leadership.

“Whereas President Trump has a very strong, dominant style — he’s not weak at all — a lot of the men here in the House are weak,” Greene said. “There’s a lot of weak Republican men and they’re more afraid of strong Republican women. So they always try to marginalize the strong Republican women that actually want to do something and actually want to achieve.”

Jealousy may be part of the dynamic, she added. “They’re always intimidated by stronger Republican women because we mean it and we will do it and we will make them look bad,” she said.

Greene believes there’s a “night and day” difference between how Johnson and McCarthy treated women in the conference. McCarthy carefully recruited and boosted talented women, she said. Meanwhile, women have been pushed aside under new leadership.

Rep. Lisa C. McClain (Michigan), the Republican conference chair, described as “ridiculous” Greene’s accusation that Johnson does not promote women.

“Speaker Johnson has empowered women by treating them — and all members — with the respect they have earned,” she said in a statement. “He believes in merit, not identity politics, which has allowed countless women to serve alongside him and advise him.”

Greene said she doesn’t believe in playing “the woman card,” a term for using one’s sex to gain an advantage. When she owned a construction business, she said, she never became a minority contractor.

“I want to earn my position,” she said.

But she suggested congressional women have not always been given that chance.

“The same people telling Trump I can’t win a general are the same people that get filthy rich off consulting on as many campaigns they can get the president to endorse,” she said in a statement.

Stefanik, another Trump ally and potent GOP messenger, lost her spot as ambassador to the United Nations in March after Trump announced she was needed in the House. Instead, national security adviser Michael Waltz was shifted to the role after the fallout from Signalgate, an incident in which he appeared to inadvertently invite a reporter to a private chat with other Cabinet officials about a military strike.

“It was unbelievably insulting,” Greene said. “I thought it was horrible.” She slammed Johnson for giving Stefanik, who currently serves as chairwoman of House Republican leadership, “some honorary bulls--- role.”

“She gets shafted, he gets rewarded,” she said of Stefanik and Waltz.

The incident smacked of unfairness to Greene. “She’s a woman so it was OK to do that to her somehow,” Greene said.

At the time, Stefanik appeared annoyed at Johnson over the flap, publicly contradicting his contention that he had talked to her about running for higher office before her nomination was yanked.

Stefanik’s office declined to comment. The congresswoman has recruited and boosted Republican women in GOP primaries through her leadership PAC since 2020.

Two Republican women have joined Greene to sign onto the discharge petition that would require the Justice Department to release all information pertaining to its investigation of Epstein’s crimes. Greene, Rep. Lauren Boebert (Colorado) and Rep. Nancy Mace (South Carolina) are the only Republicans to join Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), who co-led the effort, on the petition.

The women have taken heat from the White House for their signatures, which a White House official said were being interpreted as a “hostile act.”

“I think for a few of us … me, Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert, it’s such a disgusting issue that we’re like, we don’t care if we get attacked,” she said, and added that her male colleagues may not be able to “relate” to that concern.