Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), an avid supporter of former President Donald Trump as he makes another run for the White House, went to Milwaukee for the first debate in the GOP presidential primary, though her selection in the race — Trump — wasn’t participating.
As she described it, it didn’t go well. In an interview with a right-wing media outlet, she claimed to have been blocked from entering what is known as the spin room, where members of candidates’ teams can interact with members of the media following the actual events of the debate. Greene’s discussion for the conservative outlet was taking place outside and in the dark of night, though they had lighting to illuminate their personal presences on camera. In the background, individuals who’d presumably attended the debate can be seen streaming through the darkness that’s still visible.
“They would not allow myself, Matt Gaetz, any other Trump surrogates to go into the spin room,” Greene complained. “We argued with them, talked to them. We showed the correct credentials. We had spin room credentials. And they would not let us in. So, this is censorship from Fox News.”
She spoke about the issue further, eventually claiming — falsely — that Trump had been indicted in Georgia as part of similar censorship that targeted his political speech after the last presidential election. He has not, however, been criminally charged at any level specifically for simply making certain comments. The charges relate to alleged criminal conspiracies — involving action, both planned and executed — to target the results, either on a state or national level.
Predictably, Greene also maligned all of the actual candidates who did appear, a list ranging from Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) to Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis, the latter of whom has sunk in the polls throughout his short and struggling campaign. DeSantis was maligned from the other side for initially refusing to directly answer the question of whether he thought Mike Pence acted appropriately on January 6, when as vice president Pence went along with the routine certification of the presidential election results, something that’s ordinarily mostly uncontroversial.
CENSORED: I’m an official surrogate for President Trump, but I was blocked from entering the Fox News media spin room pic.twitter.com/sH3JLNpYzR
— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) August 24, 2023