Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's boasts that she would have planned a successful insurrection serves as a warning that she's "untouchable" within the Republican Party, and MSNBC's John Heilemann said she's going to continue flaunting her power.
The Georgia Republican has quickly become one of the most influential GOP lawmakers, and she has formed an alliance with minority leader Kevin McCarthy that boosts her standing in the caucus by making the would-be House speaker beholden to her whims.
"She has a giant platform, and if you go down to her district, she's a rock star there, and she is nationally one of the most potent fundraisers in the Republic universe," Heilemann said. "Not because the mainstream press pays attention to her, it's that she has this giant independent power base that exists in that orbit, which is now a separate sphere, and she is, I think, you know, she is going to call the tune. We're going to have to get used to to it. She's going to operate with impunity. What she said is ridiculous, what she said is a million things, she's testing the bounds of her power there."
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Greene has become an avatar for Donald Trump's most rabid supporters, Heilemann said.
"'I will say what I'm going to say, and no one in my party is going to push back on me,'" he said, speaking for Greene. "' Because they recognize now, in some ways, I have the pulse of the Donald Trump base, in some ways more than Donald Trump does. I am one of the most powerful people in this party. I have Kevin McCarthy by the ... you know.'"
"She's got Kevin McCarthy in her hands, let's put it that way, and his fate -- if she turns on Kevin McCarthy, he's not speaker anymore, and we know how much Kevin McCarthy wants to be speaker," Heilemann added, "and she's letting everybody know, including Kevin McCarthy, that she can say what she wishes and no one will do anything to stop her. We're not going to see a lot of it, she's going to flex that muscle all the time because she wants to make sure everyone is aware of her power, and that's how she keeps the kind of influence she has is by exercising -- that kind of what we think of as disgusting, but what she thinks of as a demonstration of the fact that she's untouchable in her caucus."
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