Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s call for a “national divorce” that separates “red states and blue states” has provoked fierce criticism from President Joe Biden’s White House.
“Congresswoman Greene’s comments are sick, divisive, and alarming to hear from a member of the House Oversight and Homeland Security Committees,” said White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson, in a response to Greene exclusively shared with The Daily Beast.
Once a pariah in the House Republican ranks who was removed from her committee posts, Greene was instrumental in the election of Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) last month. With McCarthy firmly in her corner, and with even better committee assignments, Greene is one of the most influential GOP lawmakers.
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“Congressional Republicans,” Patterson said, “have an obligation to say clearly whether they agree with Congresswoman Greene’s calls to dissolve the union or condemn her vile push to further divide our nation.”
During the President’s Day holiday, as Biden visited President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in war-torn Ukraine, the far-right Georgia Republican unloaded tweets endorsing the idea that the United States should somehow be split apart.
“We need to separate by red states and blue states and shrink the federal government. Everyone I talk to says this,” tweeted Greene. “From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”
Responding to Biden’s tweet about his visit to Kyiv, Greene declared, “impeach Biden or give us a national divorce.”
The comments sparked widespread backlash, including among fellow Republicans, though Greene’s colleagues were quiet on the idea. Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT) called her rhetoric “destructive and wrong and—honestly—evil.” Conservative commentators also mocked the idea online, not to mention scores of Democratic officials.
On Tuesday, Greene sought to further explain her comments, stating in a tweet thread that she was calling for “not a civil war but a legal agreement to separate our ideological and political disagreements by states while maintaining our legal union.”
In the lengthy thread, Greene failed to explain what such a complex arrangement would look like, instead spelling out a convoluted scenario in which red states and blue states would simply make their own decisions more freely. In her far-fetched formulation, the Department of Defense would continue to exist for basic national defense while the Department of Education would be abolished.
Patterson, in providing the first White House response to Greene’s proposal, invoked Biden’s central campaign theme. She said the president “ran for office to restore the soul of the nation, not to let Republicans in Congress rip our country apart at the seams.”
Greene’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the White House’s remarks.
Georgia, Greene’s home state, voted for Biden in 2020, technically making it a blue state.
