Marjorie Taylor Greene Rips GOP's 'Russian Roulette' Over McCarthy

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia took her House colleagues to task over the debacle surrounding Kevin McCarthy's bid for speaker of the House.

McCarthy, the House minority leader since 2019, entered the 118th Congress under a cloud of uncertainty. Despite Republicans now possessing a majority in the House of Representatives, their razor-thin margin of seats and significant dissent against him from the far-right flank of the party had thrown his once-certain bid for speaker of the House into chaos.

By the end of the House's first day of the new session, McCarthy's bid was stalled, having failed to gain the 218 votes necessary over the course of three rounds of voting. In the first two rounds, 19 Republicans broke ranks to vote against McCarthy, but by the third round, it had grown to 20 with Byron Donalds of Florida joining the ranks of dissenters.

Among the prominent Republicans who voted against McCarthy were Matt Gaetz of Florida, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Paul Gosar of Arizona and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.

One of the prominent far-right House Republicans to back McCarthy was Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, with her endorsement for him as speaker causing friction with her allies, including the likes of Boebert and Gaetz.

Expressing frustration over the failed votes on Tuesday, Greene took to Twitter and accused her colleagues of playing "Russian roulette" with the GOP's House majority.

This came in response to a tweet from far-right pundit Charlie Kirk alleging plans by Democrats to create "coalition leadership" and effectively split power in the House evenly.

"If the base only understood that 19 Republicans voting against McCarthy are playing Russian roulette with our hard earned Republican majority right now," Greene tweeted. "This is the worst thing that could possibly happen."

Over the course of the day, Greene also decried those who voted against McCarthy as "destructionists."

A significant portion of the pushback against McCarthy's bid came from members of the far-right Freedom Caucus. Ahead of the votes on Tuesday, Perry, who chairs the caucus, released a statement condemning McCarthy and claiming that he "rejected" his opportunity to work with them and secure their votes.

"We've worked in good faith for months to change the status quo. At nearly every turn, we've been sidelined or resisted by McCarthy," Perry said, "and any perceived progress has often been vague or contained loopholes that further amplified concerns as to the sincerity of the promises being made."

Newsweek reached out to Perry's office for comment.