Rep. Greene defends motion to oust Speaker Johnson: 'I'm not bringing chaos, I'm forcing change'
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., joins 'Sunday Morning Futures' to explain her reason for filing a motion to vacate against Speaker Mike Johnson.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., stood behind her motion to oust Speaker Mike Johnson after the Republican-led House pushed through a massive $1.2 trillion bipartisan federal funding package to avert a government shutdown last week.
"Republicans are fed up with it. Republican voters want fighters in the House of Representatives to fight like President Trump, and that is exactly what I'm doing," she told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.
"I will force change. I'm not bringing chaos. I'm forcing change."
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) speaks to reporters outside of the U.S. Capitol Building during a vote on legislation pertaining to TikTok on March 13, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
House conservatives like Greene remain frustrated by the package's passage and argue it extends policies outlined by the previously Democratic-controlled Congress with sky-high spending and a lack of Republican policy riders.
It's evidence of the party's ongoing political civil war that ousted former California Rep. Kevin McCarthy as speaker last October, an effort spearheaded by Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz.
Now McCarthy's successor is in the hot seat among some members of his party.
"Speaker Johnson, who has barely been a speaker for six months, led us to a complete catastrophe. He passed a giant omnibus bill, the second part of it, this week on Friday, after breaking the 72-hour rule, only giving Republicans a day to read 1,012 pages and not allowing us to pass amendments to make any changes to this bill, which Chuck Schumer had stuffed full of [the] Democrat wishlist and [kept] the Biden catastrophe border policies going," Greene said.
HOUSE PASSES $460 BILLION GOVERNMENT FUNDING BILL BLASTED BY GOP HARDLINERS
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) talks to reporters during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center on February 14, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
"Americans are sick and tired of failure in the House of Representatives," she continued. "We are barely hanging on to our Republic, a nation with over $34 trillion in debt, and we cannot have a Republican Speaker of the House that is willing to do the bidding of Chuck Schumer, handing over the gavel to him and letting him pass the Schumer House bill on the floor and not allowing any of us Republicans to do our jobs."
Responding to the motion, Johnson's office told Fox News Digital in a statement, "Speaker Johnson always listens to the concerns of members, but is focused on governing. He will continue to push conservative legislation that secures our border, strengthens our national defense, and demonstrates how we'll grow our majority."
At the forefront of Republicans' concerns is the border crisis, brought into the spotlight most notably by the recent death of Augusta University nursing student Laken Riley, who was murdered by an illegal immigrant on the University of Georgia campus in Athens, Georgia last month.
MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE FILES MOTION TO OUST SPEAKER JOHNSON
A night view of The Capitol building dome in Washigton DC on October 20, 2022. Congress passed the massive federal funding package that was signed by President Biden on Saturday. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Recent footage of migrants rushing across the southern border has only exacerbated concerns as well.
Greene, meanwhile, said the massive bill signed by President Biden on Saturday does nothing to secure the border and "does everything to keep the Biden administration's horrible border invasion, the deadly daily invasion going every single day."
"The House Republicans have passed incredible border security bills like H.R. 2 and the Laken Riley Act. Speaker Johnson's one chance to truly secure the border is with the power of the purse, and that's in these funding bills. If Speaker Johnson really wanted to secure the border like he promised all of us he would… then he would have told Chuck Schumer, ‘We will not pass any government funding bills until [they] have the H.R. 2 in them, or the Laken Riley Act, or at least some measures within them,’ but he didn't. He completely failed in that," she added.
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Fox News' Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.