During an interview this week on CNN, former Republican Congressman Ken Buck of Colorado condemned recent rhetoric from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), characterizing the comments from the outspoken and prominent Republican as clearly tracing to Russian interests.
Buck was speaking against the backdrop of Greene’s incessant rhetoric against Ukraine in the context of the Eastern European country’s ongoing war with Russia, a conflict started and led by the larger nation’s authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin.
“Marjorie is on the wrong side of history,” Buck told Erin Burnett. “We know that Russia is propagating these false statements, narratives about what’s going on in Ukraine. We know that she is getting her talking points from Russia and we know that they’re false and Mike Johnson is doing the responsible thing by trying to make sure we get a vote on Ukraine funding, make sure that Ukrainian people can fight for their freedom.”
Greene is dangling a push to remove Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) from his legislative leadership role as Speaker of the House, mirroring the initiative that ended ex-GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s time in the same position. She already unveiled a motion to boot Johnson, though it’s yet to go to a vote by the full chamber.
Greene’s rhetoric reached such an extreme that she said in a recent interview with longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon that Russian forces appeared to be effectively defending Christianity in the context of that war with Ukraine, though the Putin-led military has orchestrated a campaign of violence across Ukraine that has swept up the country’s religious personnel alongside so many others.
“Let’s talk about what this really is, Steve,” Greene told Bannon. “This is a war on Christianity. The Ukrainian government is attacking Christians. The Ukrainian government is executing priests. Russia is not doing that. They’re not attacking Christianity. As a matter of fact, they seem to be protecting it.” Does that not sound like something directly pulled from Putin’s handbook?
