Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is challenging House Speaker Mike Johnson's leadership, and panelists on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" agreed the Georgia Republican appeared to be "running the show."
Greene filed a motion to vacate the speaker's chair last month, which would take only three GOP votes to remove him and leaves a threat looming over Johnson's head as he seeks funding for Ukraine, and political analyst Jon Heilemann said that also renders the Republicans incapable of governing.
"The notion that this inexperienced speaker who got inasmuch by fluke in the fact that the Republican Party couldn't figure out anybody else to put in this job after the fall of Kevin McCarthy, the fact that this -- we would get here where his speakership would be imperiled and people on his right flank would be talking about wanting to oust him and do to him what they did to Kevin McCarthy is like the least surprising piece of political news in the history of the world," Heilemann said. "I think you could have seen this coming, and people predicted it from the day that he won the speakership."
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Greene had been an ally of McCarthy, and despite falling out with the hard-right Freedom Caucus and having served in Congress for only three years has reached a unique position of importance through her close relationship with Donald Trump, who "Morning Joe" co-host Willie Geist said appeared to be pulling the strings in the House.
"What a commentary on the state of the Republican Party," Geist said. "Marjorie Taylor Greene, from a small district in north Georgia, who appears to be actually running the show on behalf of Donald Trump, and her complaint in that letter, where she said she will not tolerate this kind of leadership, as if she's the one who decides... That is where we are in this Republican Party in the House."
Greene's growing influence is largely responsible for the exodus of Republicans from the House, according to Jonathan Lemire, White House bureau chief of Politico and MSNBC's "Way Too Early."
"That dynamic is what Republicans in the House have been privately saying for months now is that Marjorie Taylor Greene is the power source in the lower chamber," Lemire said, "and some are retiring and giving up their posts because they don't want to do this anymore."
