The NPR Politics Podcast - GOP Weighs Who To Punish: Conspiracy Theorist And/Or Impeachment Supporter

Episode Date: February 3, 2021

Liz Cheney is the third-ranking House Republican; she voted for President Trump's second impeachment. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a freshman lawmaker who pushes a range of wild conspiracies. Their Republican colleagues are struggling to decide whether to punish either of them.This episode: congressional correspondent Susan Davis, congressional reporter Claudia Grisales, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Brooke from Milwaukee. I'm folding my laundry and reorganizing my drawers to separate my sleeping pajamas from my daytime pajamas. That's pretty good. Because if I'm going to stay at home all the time, I'm at least going to be cozy. This podcast was recorded at 2.03pm on Wednesday, February 3rd. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll probably still be wearing pajamas. Enjoy the show. This is this. I relate to this timestamp in a way that almost makes me uncomfortable.

I think we should take a poll. I bet we're all in our daytime pajamas right now. I don't I don't have any comment on that. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I don't I don't have any comment on that. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Claudia Grisales. I also cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And House Republicans are dealing with problems involving two of their members, but for very different reasons. The

first is Liz Cheney. She's the number three ranking House Republican. And the second is Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia. Claudia, let's start with Cheney. She obviously voted to impeach President Trump. That's something we've talked about a lot on the pod. And now some of her colleagues want her kicked out of leadership for that. Who's driving this effort? This is the Trump wing of the Republican Party. These are the populist members. So members of the Freedom Caucus have been especially vocal in this effort. That includes Matt Gaetz of Florida, who traveled to Wyoming on this anti-Cheney tour, if you will. And other members of the Freedom Caucus, such as its chairman, Andy Biggs of Arizona, are also vocal supporters of her removal. What has Cheney had to say about all this?

She has been largely silent publicly. A reporter caught her this morning just before this meeting and she said she would have more to say after today's GOP conference meeting on Capitol Hill later this afternoon. But largely her talking is taking place behind closed doors. We haven't heard a lot from her publicly other than she made her decision to impeach the president. She made a statement ahead of time. And since that time, we've been awaiting more word to see where she stands on all this and all of this pressure. Republicans are also facing pressure to take Marjorie Taylor Greene off of her committee

assignments. I believe she's on the Education Committee and the Budget Committee. I don't exactly know how to explain succinctly what the problem with Marjorie Taylor Green is. So I would put it to either one of you. What exactly is the problem that Republicans are facing with her? Well, Republicans are facing the problem that she represents the QAnon wing of her party. She has tweeted a litany of offensive things, conspiratorial statements. She has either liked or retweeted statements calling for violence against members of Congress. She has talked about Jewish space lasers that caused wildfires in California. And she, of course, is one of the biggest proponents of the lie that Donald Trump had a victory in 2020 stolen from him. Mara, these problems seem to be sort of metaphors for the bigger identity crisis that the Republican Party is in after Trump's loss.

Right. I can't think of a more perfect symbol of this problem than you've got one member of the leadership, Liz Cheney, who is extremely conservative on policy, but she believes that Donald Trump, you know, ginned up the mob to storm the Capitol and thought and voted for his impeachment. On the other side, you have Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is about as simpatico with the protesters who wanted to overturn the election as any member of Congress. And the problem for Republicans is that Marjorie Taylor Greene represents a much bigger chunk of the Republican base than Liz Cheney. Liz Cheney has the establishment behind her, but Marjorie Taylor Greene has the voters. It's also fascinating because leadership didn't whip the vote on impeachment. It was they told members it would be a vote of conscience. And Liz Cheney clearly voted her conscience. And now she's being punished for that. And that's actually not something we normally see when leadership says you can vote however you want on this. There doesn't tend to be consequences. And I think Claudia does speak to how loyal the rank and file

in the House Republican Conference are to President Trump over almost anything else. Right. I just spoke to a Republican strategist recently, Brendan Buck, who was an advisor to former House Speaker Paul Ryan. And he was saying that what we're seeing play out in real time is the populist wing swallowing up the traditional, more establishment wing of the party time and time again. He goes back to the Access Hollywood video moment for then candidate Donald Trump, who was running for president and thinking that was going to be the moment the party was going to shift, and it didn't. And so in the last several years, he has seen again and again the party buck to this

populist wing. So this debate between Cheney and Greene is forcing these leaders to decide right now who's going to be the face of their party. Greene is forcing them to either address her claims or risk she will become the new face for the party. And don't forget, she had a conversation with President Trump that she tweeted about, which she made very clear that he's 100% behind her. She's 100% for him. I don't know if that strengthened her position or not. But you know, there is a precedent for this. The Republican Party pretty much ostracized one of their own members in the House, Steve King of Iowa. And Liz Cheney took the lead on that. He was somebody who had made statements over the years expressing sympathy with white supremacy. I think the straw

that broke the camel's back for him was when he said, Western civilization, white supremacy, nationalism, when did those words become offensive? Something like that. And he was removed from his party positions. So Claudia, when are Republicans going to decide the fates of these two members? So there will be a GOP conference meeting later today on Capitol Hill, and that's when they're going to be going through the fates of both Cheney and Greene. Now, when it comes to Greene, she has met with McCarthy already. So we're going to see a little bit of a sequel to that today and see if they'll be able to talk about publicly where they stand with her. As far as Cheney is concerned, we'll see if these calls, especially from establishment members, and this includes

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, will give her the boost she needs to overcome all of these calls for her to step down from her leadership post. One of the things that I wonder about in this situation, especially with Marjorie Taylor Greene, is whether Democrats are maybe overplaying their hand a little bit or at least risking setting what could be a precedent that comes back to bite them. Because if they move of their own party

to remove her from these committee assignments, I mean, that just doesn't happen. One party doesn't tend to get in another party's affairs. And there isn't much precedent for doing that. When they removed Steve King, Republicans decided to do that to their own. Traditionally, parties decide who sit on their committees, not the other. And I think Republicans are already kind of pushing back and saying, look, if you do this now, when we're in control, we're going to do the same thing right back to you when you have lawmakers who say things we don't support. And you'd think there are other ways Democrats could make sure that Marjorie Taylor Greene was the Republicans' problem, even while they expressed

their fierce disapproval of her. I mean, she could be censured. There's a lot of other things you can do. But to remove for the Democrats, to remove her from committees, I think that does set up a kind of downward spiral. And I would think that it's in Democrats' political interest to make this a Republican problem. All right. So let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk more about these divisions in the Republican Party. We are still in the middle of this pandemic. And right now, having science news you can trust from variants to vaccines is essential. NPR Shortwave has your back. About 10 minutes every weekday. Listen leader to weigh in on what's going on in the other chamber. But this week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell weighed in on all of this Somebody, and this somebody is Marjorie Taylor Greene, although he doesn't name her directly, who suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the

Pentagon on 9-11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clinton's crashed JFK Jr.'s airplane is not living in reality. This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can strengthen our party. Mara, what do you think Mitch McConnell's motivation is here? I mean, this is not a leader who is known to speak when he doesn't have something very specific to say. No, I think while a lot of political America is focusing on the 72 or 5% of Republicans who believe in the lie that Donald Trump's great victory was stolen from him. Mitch McConnell is paying attention to the other 28% of Republicans, who if they

are repelled by this kind of conspiracy theory, violence mongering, whatever you want to call it, that could break the Republican Party. And Mitch McConnell wants to be the majority leader again after 2022. And I think his motivation is pretty plain. He sees Marjorie Taylor Greene as a threat to the Republican Party's political prospects. And otherwise, why would he speak up about something that should go up to the Capitol. And he kind of left it dangling out there that maybe he was open to voting for conviction. And that fell with a big thud. You know, he didn't get a lot of takers on that, but he's still out there, you know, planting a flag for where he feels the Republican Party has to be or else they're going to be

consigned to a minority for a long time. I think Mara brings up a really good point in terms of the tensions that we're seeing McConnell walk into in terms of considering looking at the national prospects. They lost the House, the Senate and the White House under Trump. And I imagine that McConnell and others don't want to do that again. They want to get control somewhere, perhaps in the next couple of years, they could get control of the House or Senate at that time. So they're looking at their national prospects. Meanwhile, an opposing motivation here we're seeing with these House members that are, for example, fighting against any objections to Green, for example, are saying

or focusing on their primaries. Who are we going to listen to? The Republican voters that will get us past our primary because we're not in much danger when it comes to the general. You know, the national influence, maybe we'll lose that, but they'll continue on their kind of self-interested paths. And I think that's a little bit of what we're seeing play out here, especially with McConnell. Right. And senators generally have to appeal to a broader audience. So that's what McConnell's thinking about, too. Yeah. Claudia, it's so striking to me how different the responses of the Republican leaders have been after January 6th and towards former President Trump. I mean, Mitch McConnell has just taken a totally different tact than House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

They clearly don't seem to be on the same page here. Exactly. We're seeing this widening gulf play out between McCarthy and McConnell in those initial hours after the insurrection. It appeared these leaders might be on the same page. But more recently, after McCarthy caught criticism for directing some of the blame for the insurrection at Trump, he flew down to the former president's Mar-a-Lago resort. And that just illustrates he's not ready for a divorce from Trumpism. Meanwhile, McConnell, on the other hand, he's opened the door on this possible divorce. That said, Trumpism keeps

pulling back on the party. So we're seeing this play out in terms of these two leaders just kind of pulling this party in two different directions right now. And remember, the direction, this is not a debate about policy. Trumpism isn't about policy, except for maybe, you know, guns and immigration. But this is about whether you're going to accept the reality that Donald Trump describes, or what you see with your own eyes and ears and what the judiciary tells you is an actual fact. I mean, that seems to be the dividing line, people who want to align themselves with Trump and conspiracy theories, and people who don't. All right, well, I think we'll leave it there for today. We'll be back in your feeds tomorrow. All right, well, I think we'll leave it there for today. We'll be

back in your feeds tomorrow. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Claudia Grisales. I, too, cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.