Marjorie Taylor Greene Gives the (Unofficial) GOP Response

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Speaker Kevin McCarthy told his members to be on their best behavior at the 2023 State of the Union address. But Republican House members didn’t follow his lead any more than they did during the fifteen votes it took him to become speaker in early January. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was a stand-out, repeatedly heckling the President, hooting and hollering and thumbs-downing him with abandon. Some Twitter commenters compared her performance to iconic moments from Bravo’s ‘Real Housewives’ franchise.

Here are some of her greatest moments.

Standing Out in a Crowd

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) gives a thumbs down during President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address during the State of the Union. The speech marks Biden’s first address to the new Republican-controlled House. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Rep. Greene Not Having It

Credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images.

Sitting But Still Feral

Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images.

Jeering the President to His Face

Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images.

Screaming and Hollering

Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images.

Making a Point of Order

Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images.

Dressed to Stand Out and Living Her Best Life

Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images.

Biden Uses Republican Heckling To Publicly Strong-Arm Them Into Dropping Demands For Medicare, Social Security Cuts

Posted on by Kate Riga

In the strongest moment of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, the President used Republican boos and jeers to veer off script and push members of the opposing party into backing off their long-discussed desire to cut Medicare and Social Security. 

Continue reading “Biden Uses Republican Heckling To Publicly Strong-Arm Them Into Dropping Demands For Medicare, Social Security Cuts” →

Quick Take on Biden’s Speech

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Watching State of the Union addresses is one of my least favorite parts of what I do at TPM. I find them a mix of tedious and stressful to watch. By and large they don’t matter. I’d prefer not to watch them. But it’s part of the job. This was very different from any of the State of the Union addresses I’ve seen in 40-plus years of watching them.

Joe Biden isn’t a particularly rousing public speaker normally. The first 10 or 15 minutes of his address were fairly boilerplate, occasionally halting. The substance was pitched toward mid-sized and small towns in post-industrial America. This was unsurprising but well-executed. But then it went somewhere entirely different, not in substance but in presentation, energy and tone.

I don’t need to describe the speech to you because you presumably saw it. Here are the two points that stood out to me.

Continue reading “Quick Take on Biden’s Speech” →

SOTU Blogging Second Thread

Posted on by Josh Marshall

10:18 PM: We may try to put some of this together later. But there seem to be a lot of prestige reporters tonight not quite willing to say what happened on the floor in that exchange about Social Security and Medicare, with Republicans hooting and hollering. We all saw what happened.

10:05 PM: There were some feral Republicans there yelling about the border.

10:00 PM: “Equal protection under the law is a covenant we have with each other in America.”

Okay, Let’s Do This

Posted on by Josh Marshall

9:47 PM: He’s doing considerably better than I’d anticipated. I didn’t have low expectations. I just find most of these speeches by most Presidents kind of meh. He’s enjoying himself and skewering the opposition with a bear hug.

9:45 PM: Joe, Medicare and Social Security saver …

9:43 PM: A lot of Republicans really don’t like the facts.

9:37 PM: Oy …

9:34 PM: He seems jazzed.

9:29 PM: ‘Jobs are coming back, pride is coming back.’

9:23 PM: “We came together” seems to be the theme.

9:20 PM: McCarthy is trying to follow the GOP vow never to clap but he seems to kind of give in toward the end. Can’t quite manage it.

9:11 PM: I guess we’re charm offensive-ing. I always have equivocal feelings about this. On the one hand, don’t bring a noodle to a knife fight. On the other, the audience isn’t the members in the building. It’s the public at home. That’s what’s important to remember.

9:08 PM: Apparently Biden and Santos made locked eye contact but didn’t say anything or shake hands. The news has been delivered.

Finally A Decent Balloon Article

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Unlike a lot of reporting on the Chinese balloon, this piece in the Post contains new and interesting information. The Pentagon believes the flight is part of a fairly extensive global effort that has been going on for about five years: Low-tech balloons, married to high-tech communications tools. Notably, according to the Post, the U.S. military doesn’t believe the flight across North America is an accident, as I’d speculated. But they also don’t believe it was a provocation. On the contrary, the Chinese were surprised that it was detected and chagrined that it led to the cancelation of Tony Blinken’s scheduled trip to Beijing.

Even based on this article, it still seems to me to be something of a mystery just how valuable the intelligence collected by these balloons really is. Experts seem divided on this point. Part of the answer may simply be that they’re vastly cheaper than launching satellites. So dollar-for-dollar they may still provide some value. Countries around the world now appear to be matching the balloon flights to what were past instances of unidentified objects in their airspace.