MAGA rebel Marjorie Taylor Greene is sounding the alarm that President Donald Trump will exploit the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner as an excuse “to give up your rights.”
The former GOP congresswoman and one-time Trump devotee lashed out at the president on Sunday, hours after a gunman tried to storm Saturday’s dinner at the Washington Hilton in D.C. The suspect, Cole Thomas Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from Los Angeles, was allegedly trying to kill Trump and top administration officials, according to a manifesto obtained by the New York Post.
Trump, 79, wasted little time using the shooting to argue for the need for his White House ballroom. But Greene, 51, accused him of using the fallout to justify another of his priorities: a U.S. spy program.
“The President is using his war on Iran and last night’s WHCD shooting as excuses to give up your rights so that Congress just passes a clean extension of FISA 702,” Greene wrote on X, referring to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which empowers the administration to intercept the electronic communications of non-U.S. nationals in foreign countries without a warrant.
“It’s ridiculous and absurd that any President who has sworn an oath to uphold the constitution would ever tell Americans to give up your rights so the government has the ability to spy on you, especially a government that has already done it to not only him, but to hundreds of thousands of Americans,” she continued.
Section 702 gathers data on nearly 350,000 foreign nationals who live outside the U.S. but communicate with Americans, meaning those Americans’ calls, texts, and emails can be swept up and accessed by federal officials, according to NPR.
The program is set to expire on April 30, and the White House has been urging Congress to extend it into at least 2027, but it remains a highly divisive issue among MAGA Republicans.
Trump has publicly railed against FISA in the past; the program played a role in the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, which the president has long decried as a “hoax.”
While the president has not yet used the WHCA dinner shooting to promote Section 702, as Greene suggested, he has been actively pushing the measure on Truth Social.
“While parts of FISA were illegally and unfortunately used against me in the Democrats’ disgraceful Witch Hunt and Attack in the RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA Hoax, and perhaps would be used against me in the future, I am willing to risk the giving up of my Rights and Privileges as a Citizen for our Great Military and Country!” he declared earlier this month. “Our Military Patriots desperately need FISA 702, and it is one of the reasons we have had such tremendous SUCCESS on the battlefield.”
However, Greene, who has emerged as a persistent critic of Trump since leaving Congress in January, asked why Trump won’t simply re-authorize FISA with warrant requirements.
“The questions you should be asking is why is this so hard for them and why would the President of the United States demand a clean re-authorization of FISA 702 without warrant requirements???” she wrote.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
