Steve Bannon Calls for Marjorie Taylor Greene to Be Primaried

Former White House adviser Steve Bannon has called on all 149 House Republicans who voted to increase the debt ceiling to be primaried while appearing to take particular issue with Georgia's Marjorie Taylor Greene's support of the deal.

Speaking on his War Room podcast, the top Donald Trump ally hit out at those in the Republican Party who voted for the bipartisan bill negotiated between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy while urging they be challenged to run for office again by their own party.

On May 31, the House voted to suspend the debt limit through January 2025 and cut spending by at least $1.5 trillion by 314-117 votes—149 from Republicans and 165 from Democrats. Among the GOP figures who voted for the bill were Greene and fellow Trump loyalists Jim Jordan of Ohio and Kentucky's Thomas Massie.

Bannon, a former White House chief strategist for the Trump administration, has now demanded that the GOP House members who supported the debt ceiling deal "all have to be primaried" including those who have gained support from the MAGA base.

"Let me repeat that. All of them, including people we're quite fond of and some who we used to be fond of, have to be primaried," Bannon said in an apparent reference to Greene.

In a post on the conservative social media site Gettr, Bannon previously suggested that both Greene and Jordan should face primary challenges by "Real MAGA" candidates in the wake of the debt ceiling vote.

A text message recently obtained by The Daily Beast also revealed Greene told Florida GOP Congressman Matt Gaetz that she is "done" with Bannon.

Explaining why he believes all 149 House Republicans who voted for the deal should face a GOP primary challenge, Bannon said: "They have to stand on a debate stage in the primary season and they have to justify what they did with the knowledge they had, at the time what went on and then what the impact is, because the impact on primary season is going to be a lot worse than it is today."

Newsweek reached out to Greene's office via email for comment.

At a recent speaking event, Greene explained that she voted to support the deal although it was the "difficult" choice but one which would allow her to "sleep at night."

"I could have done the politically easiest thing in the world and say 'I'm not voting for this.' You know what I could have done? I could have played politics. I could have said, 'No, I'm not voting for this.' I could have attacked leadership, I could have tweeted about it. I could have done interviews, and then I could have sent all of you a bunch of fundraising emails," she said.

"So I chose to do the difficult thing, and you want to know how I did that? I did that because I like to sleep at night. I'm not gonna sit here and throw red meat, because that's what people want to hear. I'm going to really think about this and consider this decision. And I'm gonna do the right thing."

"And so that's what I did. I chose the hard thing," Greene added. "The one that got trashed and trashed and trashed, but I'm okay with it."