Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) on Monday called Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) the “leader” of a “charade” over her efforts to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and censure Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).
“The clowns are running the circus around here,” McGovern, the ranking member of the House Rules Committee, said during a committee hearing Monday. “And we’re wasting hours of time this week on Marjorie Taylor Greene because what? She wants to impeach somebody? And don’t even get me started on her absurd censure resolution of Congresswoman Omar that she introduced because she doesn’t know how to use Google Translate.”
McGovern was speaking during a committee hearing on H.R. Res 863, a resolution introduced by Greene last year to impeach Mayorkas “for high crimes and misdemeanors,” including an alleged failure to secure the border and detain all illegal migrants.
She called off the vote for this resolution in November after she said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) assured her the House would push forward with proceedings against Mayorkas. The House Homeland Security Committee advanced the resolution last week.
McGovern on Monday contended House lawmakers could be debating and voting on a border security package, but they cannot because Greene “is in charge, and Speaker Johnson is terrified of her and her MAGA extremist friends.”
Greene’s “legislative agenda is revenge, retaliation and impeachment. She’s introduced — get this — 20 pieces of legislation this Congress … 20. And 10 of them are to impeach or censure people she doesn’t like,” McGovern said.
“And to see this committee, this institution be so totally perverted by this garbage makes me sad,” he added later.
Greene last week said she “absolutely” deserves credit for House Republicans pushing forward with impeachment proceedings against Mayorkas after she moved to force votes on his impeachment last year.
The Georgia Republican is separately spearheading an attempt to censure Omar following a disputed translation of comments the Minnesota representative made about Somalia and Somalians. Greene accused Omar of being a “foreign agent” and called her censure legislation to the floor last week as a privileged resolution. This procedural gambit forces leadership to hold a vote within two legislative days.
This censure attempt comes just months after she introduced a resolution to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) over her comments condemning Israel for its response to Hamas and the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. A separate censure resolution of Tlaib was sponsored by Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) around the same time and eventually approved by the House.
Earlier in the meeting, McGovern hypothetically asked if Greene is in House leadership amid her various efforts and touched upon some of the lawmaker’s past controversies.
“Is she now the majority leader? Marjorie Taylor Greene? Someone who probably speaks at white supremacist rallies, someone who promotes Holocaust deniers, someone who compares Joe Biden to Adolf Hitler and who says COVID mask requirements are the same thing as Nazi gas chambers? Someone who says wildfires are caused by Jewish space lasers and that 9/11 was an inside job?” McGovern said. “That’s the person that you put in charge of this whole Republican agenda right now?”
Greene responded to McGovern’s criticism on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, and wrote, “Wow this is coming from the same guy who is well known to lay his suit jacket on the actual bathroom floor while spending a lot of time in the stall of the first floor bathroom of the Capitol.”
“Eww. That’s probably when he comes up with all this [poop emoji],” she added.
McGovern quipped back on X, writing, “No idea what you’re talking about…what are you doing in the men’s bathroom aren’t you late for a klan meeting?”
Updated at 9:12 pm.