Charlie Sykes caution on believing MTG has changed

[tblue37]

Greene is disillusioned but not transformed; she experienced no blinding light on the road to Damascus. It seems more than a bit naive to regard her now as a “voice of reason and conciliation.”

And while we ought to extend some grace to her, we are not required to embrace full-spectrum amnesia when it comes to one of the more brazen traffickers of conspiracy theories and bigotry. Perhaps now Greene really is experiencing sincere regret. But this is the same MTG who once suggested the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was staged.

She (falsely) suggested that a deadly 2018 fire in California might have been caused by lasers from space. She has (falsely) suggested that 9/11 was a hoax and that Democrats controlled the weather to suppress the GOP vote with hurricanes. She mused openly about a “national divorce” between red and blue states and (without evidence) accused the Clinton family of being involved in murders. She claimed Ruth Bader Ginsburg had been replaced by a body double so that liberals could keep her seat on the Supreme Court.

At this point, it’s hard to tell how much she actually believed and how much was part of her MAGA act. Greene is nothing if not performative, and what we are seeing now is very much a performance, even if her messaging is now somewhat less deplorable.

https://charliesykes.substack.com/p/mtg-in-the-wild?r=2k4r8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false&triedRedirect=true