CommentsLGBTQ POLITICS - Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is reportedly being considered as Donald Trump’s running mate in his possible 2024 presidential run, signaling that Trump plans to run a more combative – but just as anti-LGBTQ – campaign than in 2016 or 2020.
Robert Draper of The New York Times Magazine said on The Daily Beast‘s The New Abnormal podcast that the idea of Greene being Trump’s running mate has been “discussed since February of this year, and it’s been discussed repeatedly.”
“Now, to be fair, I mean, how many of these conversations has Trump had with other people?”
Draper’s new book entitled Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind, about the Republican party in the 18 months that followed the January 6, 2021 Capitol Insurrection, was released earlier this week.
On the podcast, he said that Greene has several characteristics that Trump would see as advantageous in a running mate. First, she has the same understanding of the value of extreme rhetoric that Trump does.
“She’s cognizant of the fact that the attention economy rewards hyperbole,” he said. “In terms of how to run a winning campaign, she was right then, and she continues to be right now to the extent that in Georgia politics, everyone running for office is trying to be Marjorie Taylor Greene. They’re all competing to be more outrageous than the other and they’re stealing lines from her to the extent that it’s become bothersome to her because now she’s competing not only against herself and whatever outrageous thing she said the day before to gain attention, but she’s competing against her mimics too.”
Second, she’s a good fundraiser.
“Republicans kind of wanted to kick her to the curb immediately,” he said, referring to when she started her term in Congress. “But instead she became a fundraising dynamo, came to have this huge social media influence, and ultimately came to be very influential within the party itself.”
Last, Draper said that she’s loyal, and Trump values loyalty. Trump hasn’t had much nice to say about his 2016 and 2020 running mate Mike Pence after he refused to overturn the results of the 2020 election for him, which he took as a betrayal.
“She has been unflaggingly loyal to Trump throughout,” he said. “What is Trump concerned about most of all in a VP after the Mike Pence experience? Loyalty. He knows that if he needs someone to fight for him to overturn a presidential election. He has every reason to expect that Greene would be by his side and would be his proximate warrior.”
When Trump picked Pence as a running mate in 2016, it was widely seen as a signal to evangelicals that Trump would toe the party line if he got put in the White House, in part due to Pence’s long history of opposition to LGBTQ rights.
Greene has a long history of anti-LGBTQ activism as well.
She introduced a bill to ban the rainbow flag from flying at U.S. embassies and co-sponsored an anti-trans bathroom bill.
She introduced multiple motions to shut down Congress just before it debated the Equality Act, which would ban anti-LGBTQ discrimination. The motions didn’t pass, but they forced her colleagues to vote on the pointless motions and ate up over an hour of debate time to make the point that LGBTQ discrimination should remain legal. She called the Equality Act “DISGUSTING, IMMORAL, AND EVIL” in a statement.
Greene, whose career in politics started by protesting Drag Queen Story Hours, put up a sign that said “There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE. ‘Trust The Science!’” in response to Rep. Marie Newman (D-IL) putting up a transgender flag outside of her office. Newman’s child is transgender.
More recently, Greene introduced a bill in Congress to ban doctors from providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth, making it a class C felony. Her bill would also ban transgender adults on Medicaid from getting gender-affirming care, and even ban medical schools from teaching about gender-affirming care.
(Alex Bolllinger has been working in LGBTQ media for over a decade and has a Masters degree from the Paris School of Economics. He lives in Paris with his partner. Follow @alexpbollinger on Twitter. This story was published in LGBTQ Nation.)