Marjorie Taylor Greene confronts Liz Cheney and Jamie Raskin as tensions rise during contempt vote

By CNN

Published October 22, 2021 7:15 AM

CNN

By Annie Grayer, Kristin Wilson and Melanie Zanona, CNN

Drama on the House floor developed when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene confronted Reps. Jamie Raskin and Liz Cheney as the House was voting on the criminal contempt resolution against Steve Bannon.

The conversation with Greene devolved to “Jewish space lasers” and the Georgia Republican accusing Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, of not investigating the violence of Black Lives Matter protests.

“This is a joke,” Greene said in a raised voice to Raskin and Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, engaging in an altercation with the pair in the middle of the House floor.

Then Greene walked closer and said directly to Raskin, “Why don’t you care about the American people?”

Raskin replied, “You represent the American people.”

Video of the House floor documents Greene approaching Raskin and Cheney. Greene waves her hands in the air, and at one point Cheney points her finger in the air back at Greene before turning her back. A row of seats separated the three for the majority of the time.

Cheney responded to Greene by saying she was a “joke” and referred to a previous Greene comment about Jewish space lasers, per source familiar with the interaction.

“I never said that!” Greene yelled back at Cheney. “You’re done. You’re a joke, Liz. Your party rejected you.” As Greene walked away from the pair, she suggested: “Why don’t you go investigate something that matters to the American people?”

Greene’s comments toward Cheney are just the latest example of how tensions continue to boil between members of the Freedom Caucus and Cheney, who was voted out of her GOP leadership position and is viewed by the right wing of her caucus as having betrayed them by joining the Democratic-led committee investigating January 6.

After the altercation, Raskin told reporters, “She started screaming at Liz.”

Raskin supplied more details after the fact, stating that Greene was asking him to investigate the violence surrounding Black Lives Matter protests.

“What she said to me was, ‘When are you going to do your investigation of the violence surrounding Black Lives Matter?’ And I said, ‘Like with Kyle Rittenhouse who went and killed two Black Lives Matter protesters? I’m sure there will be an opportunity for us to get to that,'” Raskin said. “And then, you know, it degenerated it from there as you can imagine.”

Describing the heated exchange between Cheney and Greene specifically, Raskin said Greene “seemed to have some kind of ancient beef with the former chair of the House Republican Conference Liz Cheney over the Jewish space lasers thing or something like that. And she denied that she’d ever said that and then blamed it on the mainstream media.”

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