Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene faced laughter and mockery after urging decorum while holding the speaker’s gavel.
The far-right member of the GOP was presiding over the House as Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana was trying to speak.
Mr Scalise was attempting to talk about the debt ceiling standoff between President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
“We are in fact the only body in this town who has actually taken steps to address the debt ceiling and the spending problem in Washington,” the majority leader claimed, prompting one lawmaker to call out and Ms Greene to pound the gavel and call for order to be restored.
“I ask that the House be in order and there be some decorum on the other side,” Mr Scalise said.
“The members are reminded to abide by the decorum of the House,” Ms Greene told the room a moment later, prompting raucous laughter from the Democratic benches. After a few moments, Mr Scalise continued his speech.
California Democrat Adam Schiff tweeted: “I haven’t laughed this hard in a while — but Marjorie Taylor Greene just called for ‘decorum’ on the House Floor.”
The Lincoln Project wrote: “We usually add a laugh track here, but House Democrats did us the favor this time”
“We’re watching Marjorie’s Joker origin story play out in real time,” they added.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the occupant of the Chair openly mocked like this before,” reporter Jamie Dupree noted.
California Democrat Jared Huffman tweeted: “Irony died today on the House Floor, but comedy triumphed as the GOP chose MTG as their keeper of ‘decorum’.”
Fellow Californian Jimmy Gomez said that Ms Greene, “calling for decorum is like Leonardo DiCaprio telling people to date people their own age”.
Adding a second one-liner, Mr Gomez said that Ms Greene “calling for decorum is like George Santos telling people not to lie”.
The chief of staff at Young Democrats of America, Matt Royer, compared the incident to the famously more uncontrolled behaviour in the UK House of Commons.
“This is some parliament-type behavior as Democrats laugh off MTG’s plea for decorum in the House,” he said. “And I am absolutely here for it.”
Ms Greene has become infamous for the many instances when she has blatantly disregarded the decorum of the House.
She was removed from her committee assignments in 2021 by the Democrats, which were restored following the GOP’s narrow House victory in the midterms last year.
During Mr Biden’s State of the Union speech earlier this year, Ms Greene stood up and yelled at the president on several occasions, including calling him a “liar” for saying that some Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare. During other parts of the speech, she yelled “China’s spying on us!” and “Secure the border!”
Ms Greene also heckled Mr Biden during his 2022 State of the Union alongside Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert. When the president spoke about border security, the two members began chanting “build the wall”. They were also seen having their backs turned to Mr Biden as he walked into the chamber.
Ms Greene has also garnered attention for harassing New York Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and anti-gun violence activists, including school shooting survivors.
She was seen in a vocal confrontation with another New York Democrat, Representative Jamal Bowman, outside the US Capitol last week. Ms Greene then went on to claim that being called a white supremacist was comparable to being the target of the N-word.
Mr Bowman said Ms Greene was the source of an “utter and blatant lie” in the “long tradition … of Black men who are passionate, outspoken, or who stand their ground, being characterised as ‘threatening’ or ‘intimidating’”, according to The Guardian.
