Rep Liz Cheney hit out at fellow Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene after the Georgia lawmaker made remarks at a rally that her Wyoming colleague described as “exactly what Putin wants”.
On Thursday night, Ms Greene was joined by former president Donald Trump where the pair of MAGA Republicans took the stage in Sioux City to stump for Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds and US Senator Chuck Grassley in next week’s midterms.
Throughout her speech to rally support for the Republican candidates, Ms Greene made several remarks that were received by progressives as inappropriate. At one point, she goaded Mr Trump to lead supporters in booing Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who was attacked by a hammer-wielding intruder last week.
At another point, which Ms Cheney zeroed in on and later called out on social media, Ms Greene seemed to voice support for Russian President Vladimir Putin as she exclaimed that, should the GOP regain control of the House and the Senate next week, Ukraine would see their funding from the US cut off.
“Under Republicans, not another penny will go to Ukraine,” said the Georgia congresswoman.
In response, Ms Cheney, a fellow member of the GOP who has been a vocal opponent of Mr Trump and its MAGA adherents, such as Ms Greene, came out with a strong condemnation of the Georgia lawmaker’s promise.
“This is exactly what Putin wants,” tweeted Ms Cheney on Thursday night with a clip of Ms Greene on the Iowa stage. “If we’d had Republicans like this in the 1980s, we would have lost the Cold War.”
In response, Ms Greene quipped back: “There are two things that are in the past. 1. You and your Daddy’s Republican Party that sent our military to fight foreign wars on the backs of American tax dollars and didn’t win a damn thing. 2. You.”
Seizing on an opportunity to further discredit the freshman congresswoman, Ms Cheney, who lost her own Republican primary this past summer to run for re-election to a Trump-backed candidate, came out with even stronger words of admonishment for Ms Greene.
“Here’s some history for you, Marjorie. Russia was part of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was Communist. Putin was a member of the KGB. Communism & KGB = bad,” she tweeted on Friday, delivering her takedown in simple terms with a schoolteacher’s irony. “America won the Cold War. It was a great victory for freedom. Now you stand with Putin against freedom & America.”
Ms Cheney, once a stalwart Republican, has recently begun hitting the campaign trail for candidates running in races on the other side of the aisle.
Last month, the outgoing Wyoming congresswoman threw her support behind a Democratic House colleague from Michigan, Rep Elissa Slotkin, and then this week, she said during an interview on the Senate race in Ohio that she “would” vote for Democrat Tim Ryan.
Though the Wyoming native is unable to vote in Ohio, she conceded to journalist Judy Woodruff that she backed Mr Ryan and even if she was able to cast a ballot in the Midwest state, she “would not vote for JD Vance.”
This is also hardly the first time that Ms Greene has been accused of trafficking in pro-Putin propaganda and talking points.
At the onset of Russia’s invasion on Ukraine, the alt-right congresswoman received heavy criticism for claiming that the Biden administration was using its $40bn (£32.4bn) aid package to Ukraine to cover up its crimes.
“$40bn dollars but there’s no baby formula for American mothers and babies,” began the Georgia lawmaker in March, as members of the US House of Representatives began to debate the aid package. “An unknown amount of money to the CIA and Ukraine supplemental bill but there’s no formula for American babies,” she added. “Stop funding regime change and money laundering scams. A US politician covers up their crimes in countries like Ukraine.”
Her remarks inside and outside Congress drew wide rebuke, with Rep Jamie Raskin of Maryland calling her out immediately during the debate by saying, “Here’s a formula for the destruction of democracy: repeating Putin’s propaganda and disinformation and appeasing imperialist assaults on sovereign nations.”
