House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) forged an unbreakable bond with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) during his hectic leadership fight, according to friends.
The Georgia Republican was widely seen as a political liability and a threat to his leadership when she arrived in Congress two years ago, but multiple sources told the New York Times they had formed a strong alliance as McCarthy fought to be elected speaker of a narrow GOP House majority.
“I will never leave that woman,” McCarthy said, according to a friend who was granted anonymity to describe their private conversation. “I will always take care of her.”
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McCarthy told the newspaper that he trusts Greene, who reminds him of the friends he grew up with back in California.
“If you’re going to be in a fight, you want Marjorie in your foxhole,” McCarthy said. “When she picks a fight, she’s going to fight until the fight’s over. She reminds me of my friends from high school, that we’re going to stick together all the way through.”
Greene, who has quickly risen to prominence in an increasingly extreme GOP, has already exerted a strong influence over McCarthy, who has adopted her positions on vaccine mandates and funding for Ukraine’s war, and he has agreed with her call to show “the other side of the story” on the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“If he sticks to it,” Green told the Times, “will easily vindicate me and prove I moved the conference to the right during my first two years when I served in the minority with no committees.”
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