Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Motion to Oust Mike Johnson Goes Down in Flames

Marjorie Taylor Greene forced a vote to remove House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday evening, a move her colleagues in Congress quickly voted to kill.

The House voted 359-43 to table the motion, with 193 Republicans siding with 163 Democrats in striking it down.

Greene has been teasing that she will force a vote to oust Johnson despite garnering virtually no support for the move, and former President Donald Trump reportedly telling her over the weekend to drop the stunt. She seemed ready to do so yesterday, but went ahead and forced the vote on Wednesday. She was immediately greeted with an audible wave of booing.

“This is the ‘uni-party’ for the American people watching,” Greene said over the groan of boos from the chamber.

Trump responded shortly after the motion went down in flames. “I absolutely love Marjorie Taylor Greene,” he wrote on Truth Social before noting that “right now, Republicans have to be fighting the Radical Left Democrats, and all the Damage they have done to our Country.”

“We’re not in a position of voting on a Motion to Vacate,” he added.

Greene had previously filed a motion to vacate in March ahead of a vote for a spending omnibus spending bill, which aimed to prevent a government shutdown. Greene had criticized Johnson as unfit for the role given his willingness to compromise with Democrats to push through legislation.

Greene’s desire to oust Johnson as House Speaker intensified after the House passed long-delayed foreign aid for Ukraine and Israel last month, threatening to vacate him from the position if he refused to resign.

Greene has been joined by a few far-right members of the House Freedom Caucus, including Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) who co-sponsored the motion to vacate, but her efforts seemed widely unpopular among Republicans, who spent weeks last year struggling to find a replacement after the previous House Speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), was ousted by a small group of Republicans.

“If we vacated this Speaker, we’d end up with a Democrat,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) had previously said. “When I vacated the last one, I made a promise to the country that we would not end up with the Democrat Speaker. And I was right. I couldn’t make that promise again.”

Greene was interrupted multiple times as she read her motion on Wednesday, either by hecklers who disagreed with the proposal or by cheers from House Democrats when she discussed Johnson’s work across the aisle.

“In a recent interview, [House] Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said ‘even though we’re in the minority, we effectively have been governing as if we were in the majority,'” Greene said, to the cheers of Democrats.

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