Marjorie Taylor Greene has been known to play with language. That’s putting it diplomatically, but maybe she’s simply confused when she talks about a “peach tree dish” and “gazpacho police.” Then there’s the geographical confusion that she falls into at times, along with a statistical flub that may have been more than a typo. Also, there’s the self-professed “wokeness” of Chris Stapleton that got Greene all worked up, but now, she’s moved onto “socialist” ills like Medicare.
Greene was on hand Turning Point Action Conference (along with noted cocaine opponent Don Jr.) over the weekend, and she dropped this confusing little ditty. Greene began by comparing Joe Biden to Lyndon B. Johnson while declaring that they were both “Democrat socialists.” She then pointed out that Johnson was once a VP (to JFK), whereas (as everyone knows), Biden was VP to Obama. And then her history lesson really went off the rails:
“His big socialist programs were the Great Society… his Great Society were big government programs to address [in sarcastic voice] education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and welfare….”
Greene: LBJ is very similar to Biden. They are both Democrat Socialists. LBJ’s big socialist programs.. to address education, medical care, rural poverty, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and welfare. pic.twitter.com/DPw7Yj1DvF
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 16, 2023
Clearly, Greene doesn’t believe that “education” should be publicly funded, and I’m not sure what she has against “transportation,” although “Medicare” is truly a head-scratching inclusion. Plenty of Republicans use Medicare after they contributed parts of their paychecks to the program for decades (and the same can be said for Social Security). Medicare also generally kicks in due to age, although disability can prompt to go into effect earlier. And although Republicans have fiddled around with age limits, it seems unlikely that they’d ever really want to rile up their voting base by eliminating it altogether.
It’s unclear whether Greene believes that Medicare is the same as Medicaid, or if this is another “peach tree dish” thing. A mystery for the ages!