For a good illustration of how the fringe of the far Right is out of step with how ordinary workaday conservative voters think and talk, listen to what Marjorie Taylor Greene told Lou Dobbs on his podcast about joining the military. Dobbs and Greene recounted various grievances with U.S. foreign policy in general and Joe Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal in particular, as well as “woke” training within the military. These are entirely fair arguments, and it is fair as well to note that they are not going to help the military recruit people. But then Dobbs asked, “Who in his or her right mind would say ‘sign me up for that, Sarge?'” and Greene responded:
Not my son and I know a lot of young people don’t want to have anything to do with that. It’s like throwing your life away. Not to mention how they’ve been forced to take the vaccine and the ones that didn’t want to take it have been discharged. Who wants to be treated that way? . . . It’s a disaster from the top down and the bottom up. We can add in the training, the woke training, where they have to undergo this ridiculous ideology of the sick and satanic left.
Throwing your life away by joining the United States military? Really? Politicians, like the rest of us, sometimes make overheated arguments in the moment, but Greene has not backed off. In a prior controversy calling Republican senators “pro pedophile” over their Supreme Court votes, her spokesman told Newsweek that she was just “calling it like she sees it.” Indeed.
CORRECTION: This report has been updated to reflect that the “calling it like she sees it” comment to Newsweek was not in reference Greene’s comment about the military.