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EXCLUSIVE
2024 Election

Marjorie Taylor Greene aims to be Trump's VP pick in 2024

"She sees herself on the short list for Trump's VP," said former Trump aide Steve Bannon, who has spoken with Greene.
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WASHINGTON — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., is angling to be Donald Trump's running mate in 2024, according to two people who have spoken to the firebrand second-term congresswoman about her ambitions.

"This is no shrinking violet. She's ambitious — she's not shy about that, nor should she be," said Steve Bannon, the former top Trump aide who hosts the "Bannon's War Room" podcast, on which Greene has been a guest.

"She sees herself on the short list for Trump's VP. Paraphrasing Cokie Roberts, when MTG looks in the mirror she sees a potential president smiling back," he added in an interview, referring to Roberts, the late political reporter who worked for NPR, ABC News and other outlets.

A second source who has advised Greene said her "whole vision is to be vice president." The source, who has ties to Trump and spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, said he also believes Greene would be on Trump's short list.

That goal is at the heart of Greene's recent efforts to rebrand herself as a politician who can stand astride the divide between the party's hard-liners and its establishment wing, the sources said.

It also helps explain why she threw herself into helping elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., speaker of the House after the midterm elections and took assignments on two committees — Homeland Security and Oversight and Accountability — where she can participate in high-profile investigations of President Joe Biden's administration. McCarthy also chose her to be part of the panel investigating how the government handled the Covid-19 pandemic.

Her push for McCarthy alienated some of her allies in the House Freedom Caucus and like-minded conservative activists, but that was a calculated risk, Bannon said.

"She's both strategic and disciplined — she made a power move, knowing it would run up hard against her most ardent crew," he said. "She was prepared to take the intense heat/hatred short-term for the long-term goal of being a player."

Trump has not publicly given any indication that he is seriously considering a vice presidential pick this early in the process, and aides did not respond to inquiries about Greene’s chances of ending up on a Trump ticket.

"Congresswoman Greene is laser focused on serving the people of Northwest Georgia on her new committees in the GOP majority," Greene spokesman Nick Dyer said by text message. "Her work on Oversight, Homeland Security, and the COVID Select committee is her priority and people shouldn’t get wrapped up into rumors."

Asked about Bannon's comments Wednesday, Greene replied, "I haven't even talked to Steve Bannon about it."

Trump and his two-time running mate, former Vice President Mike Pence, had a falling-out over Pence's pass at trying to overturn their 2020 defeat and Trump's refusal to immediately call off supporters who ransacked the Capitol, searched for Pence and chanted for him to be hanged on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump, the only announced 2024 candidate for president in either party, has struggled to get his campaign off the ground since it launched in November. He plans to travel Saturday to New Hampshire and South Carolina — two early primary states — and he remains the favorite to win the GOP nomination in national polling.

Over the course of two campaigns for Congress and a little more than two years in the House, Greene has become one of the chamber's most prodigious money-raisers, one of its highest-profile figures and a pariah to many of her colleagues.

In the 2022 midterm election cycle, Greene collected just short of $12.5 million, placing her in the top 10 of all House candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics' Open Secrets tally.

Her penchant for bombastic rhetoric is at the root of both her superior fundraising skills and her alienation of fellow lawmakers. Trump voters have reveled in her ability to agitate the Washington establishment and progressives. But her tolerance for violent rhetoric about Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who was House speaker during Greene's first term, and her embrace of conspiracy theories — involving supposed Jewish space lasers' starting a California wildfire and Muslim congresswomen's not being legitimately sworn in — were too extreme for some lawmakers in both parties.

In February 2021, the House, then controlled by Democrats, voted to remove Greene from legislative committees as punishment for "conduct she has exhibited" that fellow lawmakers found detrimental to the reputation of Congress. Eleven Republican moderates joined all of the Democrats in voting to strip her of seats on the Budget Committee and the Education and Labor Committee.

McCarthy stood by Greene at the time, facilitating the development of a political alliance. With Republicans having taken control of Congress this month, the McCarthy-led GOP Steering Committee placed Greene on two panels that will give her a platform to attack Biden, who is expected to seek re-election.

They may also give her an opportunity to repair relationships frayed by her support for McCarthy.