Marjorie Taylor Greene credits Trump for keeping McCarthy’s support intact

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said Wednesday that former President Trump deserves credit for keeping the support for Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) Speakership bid from eroding.

McCarthy saw 21 Republicans decline to back his leadership bid through two ballots on Wednesday — a tick up from the 20 detractors who opposed him in the final vote a day earlier. 

But Greene suggested that number would have been much higher if Trump hadn’t issued a statement earlier in the day urging McCarthy’s GOP critics to drop their opposition and end the stalemate that’s prevented the new GOP majority from seating the next Speaker. 

“It’s a big credit to President Trump that it really helped hold the majority that we have for Kevin McCarthy,” Greene told reporters outside the House chamber just after McCarthy had failed to secure the necessary support for the fifth time. “So that’s how to read that one.”

Greene’s support for McCarthy marks a sharp shift for the Georgia firebrand, who had vowed in the last Congress to oppose his leadership ambitions. But since Republicans won control of the lower chamber in November’s midterms, Greene has been among McCarthy’s most vocal cheerleaders, even taking on some of the same conservatives with whom she had once been closely aligned — criticism she directed at the 20 McCarthy opponents on Wednesday.

“You know what they’ve done? They’ve really got themselves out on a ledge and they need to come back, take the wins that they have. And we’re ready to get to work,” she said. 

“I hope it’s over soon because, to be honest with you, I find it embarrassing.”