Marjorie Taylor Greene Stripped of Committee Assignments
House Democrats have done what their Republican colleagues refused to do.
Wednesday evening, the House Republican Conference met to deal with a rebellion against a party leader who had voted to impeach former President Trump and with a newly-elected backbencher who made death threats against fellow Members while still a candidate.
As POLITICO Playbook reported, they send a rather mixed message.
If you’re trying to figure out the direction of the Republican Party after Wednesday’s circus of a five-hour (!) House GOP Conference meeting, good luck. One hour, Republicans were rallying around — and literally standing to applaud — the QAnon congresswoman. The next, they voted to protect the avatar of the Republican establishment from DONALD TRUMP cronies itching to boot her from leadership.
A day that was supposed to be clarifying was anything but. Yet many House Republicans emerged feeling more confident about their political fortunes — a bit of a mystery to us. Here are our takeaways from Wednesday’s soap opera:
1) Trump allies stumbled on Capitol Hill; LIZ CHENEY got her swagger back. All that talk about kicking the third-ranking House Republican out of leadership was, it turns out, just that: talk. House Republicans voted overwhelmingly to allow Cheney to keep her position — despite weeks of attacks from Trump backers who were determined to punish her for voting to impeach the ex-president.
That doesn’t mean Cheney’s in the clear. Despite their rather embarrassing defeat, Trump’s enforcers said they’re not done with her. “Tonight Liz Cheney was fighting on her home turf — Washington D.C. And if Washington won’t hold her accountable for her failed leadership, Wyoming will,” Rep. MATT GAETZ (R-Fla.), who trolled Cheney in her home state last week, said in a statement.
2) Republican lawmakers are more anti-Trump than you think. For years, they’ve talked smack behind Trump’s back as they praised him publicly in order to appease the base. Wednesday night put those private versus public sentiments in particularly stark relief: 145 Republicans backed Cheney for her job, while only 61 did not — even as most refused to defend her. What gives? The vote was by secret ballot, so lawmakers could bash Cheney in public but support her in private — i.e. when it actually mattered — without fear of repercussion.
3) KEVIN MCCARTHY gambles on GOP unity. The minority leader started the day floating a peace accord with Democrats that would remove MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE from one of her two committees. He was, unsurprisingly, rebuffed — then went all in for Greene. After a bit of throat clearing denouncing some of Greene’s past rhetoric, McCarthy effectively rallied his conference to her defense. “Never before in the history of Congress have we allowed the other party to dictate our committees,” he said, a reference to Democrats vowing to remove Greene from her committee posts if Republicans refused to. “If they come after her, they’ll come after someone else next.”
Thursday night, House Democrats rallied to oust Greene themselves:
The House approved a resolution Thursday that removes embattled GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from her assigned committees.
The final vote tally was 230-199 and 11 Republicans voted in support of the resolution: Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, John Katko of New York, Nicole Malliotakis of New York, Fred Upton of Michigan, Carlos Gimenez of Florida, Chris Jacobs of New York, Young Kim of California, Maria Salazar of Florida, Chris Smith of New Jersey and Mario Diaz Balart of Florida.
Greene, a vocal supporter of Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of election fraud, has been condemned by Democrats and many Republicans for embracing numerous conspiracy theories in videos and social media activity before she took office this year.
In posts and videos from 2018 and 2019 reviewed by CNN, Greene appeared to endorse violence against prominent Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and suggested that the Sandy Hook and Parkland shootings were staged “false flag” operations. They have since been taken down.
It’s extraordinary, if not unprecedented, to punish a Member for conduct committed as a private citizen before election. It’s actually rather problematic, especially since there is no supermajority requirement for this as there is for a formal censure. The longstanding tradition is that they are elected by the people of their districts to represent them and those people are entitled to make that choice.
But, of course, the people don’t often send dangerous lunatics who have threatened violence against the Speaker of the House, either. Greene has not helped herself since being sworn in, antagonizing other Members, such that at least one requested and was granted permission to switch to an office further away from Green for her own safety.
And this is just silly:
Greene defended herself in a speech ahead of the vote and expressed regret over some of her past remarks — which some viewed as doing too little, too late.
“These were words of the past and these things do not represent me, they do not represent my district and they do not represent my values,” Greene said of her past posts and interactions on social media.
Green is a 46-year-old woman referring to remarks she made, publicly, within the past two years, some of which while she was running for election to Congress. Further, while she seems quite deranged, she’s a 1996 graduate of the University of Georgia, the flagship institution of a well-funded system. We should expect her to know better.
And, frankly, this is just nonsense:
“This is something I absolutely rejoice in today to tell you all. I think it’s important for all of us to remember, none of us are perfect. None of us are,” she said.
Greene also said that she believes “9/11 absolutely happened” and “school shootings are absolutely real and every child that is lost, those families mourn it.”
But she also attempted to blame “cancel culture” for her troubles and the media for how she’s come across, saying, “big media companies can take teeny, tiny pieces of words that I said, that you have said, any of us, and can portray us into someone that we’re not.”
I have no idea what her actual beliefs are vis-à-vis 9/11 or Sandy Hook. But she was either lying to the public during her campaign or lying to her colleagues now. There’s simply been no new evidence made public that would change a sane person’s views on either.
She’s not lying. It’s what Frankfurt describes in On Bullshit. She’s saying whatever she thinks will work for her in the moment. Truth has nothing to do with her “thinking”.
All politicians do that to some extent, but like most bothsides, it seems to be an order of magnitude or three more common and more serious on the R side.
@gVOR08:
This is exactly what Trump does. If he can be said to be a master of anything, it’s of saying whatever he thinks will benefit him at that very moment.
So yeah, they do represent your district, or at least a majority of your district. As for your values, as far as I can tell you have none.
With regard to Cheney: I think we might be wise to remember that Cheney’s history over the past ten years in the GOP might have something to do with her colleagues’ attitude towards her. Her first attempt to get elected saw her trying to primary an established elected Republican and that did not sit well with many people. There was talk that she was using her last name and father’s position to jump the line and wasn’t putting in her time working for the job like everyone else had to. So there’s a few reasons for individual Republicans to have what we might charitably regard as mixed feelings about her, independent of Trump.
what kinda fucking bullshit is that?
@Teve:
The same kind as when she claimed she was “allowed to believe things that weren’t true.”
@gVOR08: I actually don’t think what she is doing fits Frankfurt’s thesis. There is some real, knowing dishonesty on display here.
I have seen it reported that she denounced these views. The MSM can be so lazy and gullible. She did nothing of the sort. She said that she believes the two incidents, plus 9/11, were real. She didn’t say anything about no longer believing they were false flag operations. (A false flag operation is one where another perpetrator commits a violent act and pretends to be someone else. In 9/11 it’s sometimes “the Jews”, sometimes “The Government” and in the school shootings it’s sometimes the Government (who want to take your guns) or more recently, Antifa.)
She also very definitely didn’t announce QAnon. She said that “these posts” had mixtures of truth and lies. I take that to be a weasel clause, letting the true believers know that, while she admits that some of the posts are by fakers, she knows that actual Q posts are true.
@CSK:
To answer you and Teve, it’s good Republican bulls**t.
@Kathy:
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything to compare to what comes out of the mouths of Greene and Trump.
If Trump does run in 2024, she’ll be his running mate.
@gVOR08:
Among conspiracy theorists, there often is behavior that some people may on the surface find surprising. If you think of them as kooks, shouldn’t they at least be consistent kooks, instead of being mealy-mouthed about it, one moment embracing belief in the Illuminati and the next tossing it over the side? Part of it is that they typically have some level of awareness of how crazy their views are regarded by others, and they do have some instincts on “blending in” by not fully disclosing their beliefs, or even actively denying them, depending on who they’re around.
But another aspect of it is that I actually think the conspiracy-theory mindset is so much like silly putty it enables the believers to alter themselves like this without any conscious attempt at lying. It’s paradoxical: you’ll never meet anyone more absolutely certain of their beliefs, while at the same time their belief system is built on scores of maybes and what-ifs where they end up professing ignorance a lot of the time. I had a professor who was a JFK conspiracy theorist, and I remember him telling us that he had no idea what the truth was behind JFK’s assassination and was open to numerous possibilities–he just knew Oswald wasn’t a lone wolf. That was simply impossible.
This makes it hard to discern just how much the people who peddle conspiracy theories in a public venue believe what they’re saying, or are simply scam artists. When Alex Jones retracted his Sandy Hook claims and pizzagate for legal reasons, did he know they were BS back when he was promoting them as true? Maybe. Or was he lying by claiming he no longer believed in them, and secretly still believes in them now? Maybe. But I think we also need to consider the possibility that he believes they’re real at one moment and believes the opposite at the next.
You also saw this behavior with David Irving, the Holocaust denier, during the Lipstadt trial. The 2016 movie about the trial doesn’t really go into it, but when he was put on the stand he eventually backpedaled on some of his earlier claims. He didn’t quite acknowledge that the Holocaust happened, but he did acknowledge that a lot more Jews died than he had previously admitted (I think he put the tally at 3 million–kind of splitting the difference). As with Alex Jones, I suspect we’re dealing more with a pathological liar than a true believer, but I sometimes get the impression with these folks that they, as Mary Trump put it about Donald, end up gaslighting themselves.
I am concerned about the false equivalency that will eventually emanate from Republicans on this. Kooks like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Steve King of Iowa have really lowered the bar. But Republicans, in an attempt to Both Sides this, are already squawking about Omar, AOC, etc.
There’s a vast canyon of difference between saying loony things that are untrue and saying things that people just don’t like or agree with. My fear is that the next time Republicans are in power, we’re going to see a lot of people booted off committees in retribution, rather than for actual valid reasons.
I’m not saying this shouldn’t have been done, but Republicans have not demonstrated that they will act honorably in the future.
@Jen:
And we know that the next time they gain control of the House, they will strip those women of their committee assignments. Just like we know they’ll impeach Biden three or more times just so they can refer to Biden as “the first president to be impeached more than twice.”
By no means am I arguing that Dems are making a mistake by taking the moves that provoke these reactions. We shouldn’t live in fear of how Republicans might retaliate down the line. But let’s be clear: these moves are at bottom an exercise of power, nothing more. We had good reason to impeach Trump–he should have been impeached 100 times, frankly–but the fact that it happened proves nothing. All it proves is that Dems had control of the House. Period. Similarly, we have good reason for stripping MTG of her committeeships, but the fact that it happened proves nothing. These were simply tools available to us that we used, and Republicans won’t hesitate to use the same tools and more at the next opportunity, even if it’s based on made-up nonsense. They’ve long understood how power works better than us, and it’s about time we gain that understanding and take advantage of it.
@Jen:
You are absolutely right to be concerned. But the fact that Republicans will behave dishonestly shouldn’t stop the Dems from doing the right thing. Placating sociopaths in the hope they won’t behave badly in the future is a mug’s game.
@Kylopod: Alex Jones (just like the Donald) is a huckster, if you can stomach more than 5 minutes of his blathering, you will be exposed to at least three different products that he swears by, and is offered to you at a better deal than you can get anywhere else, just take his word for it. They don’t believe most of the things they say, but their most ardent supporters do. When confronted they just deny.
MTG is different, she does believe what she says, and when confronted contorts herself to try and make plausible denials.
They are all equally dangerous.
@Jen:
As I’ve said, I’m not convinced that these lunatics won’t seize power again in 2024, at which time they’ll:
* Pull out of the Paris Climate Accord
* Pull out of WHO
* Pull out of any other international agreements they don’t like
* Decimate public health and science agencies again
The U.S. can’t be trusted to keep its promises anymore. It wholly depends on who controls the White House.
@MarkedMan:
@Kylopod:
Yes–I know. This is why I specifically included “I am not saying this shouldn’t have been done.” I agree it needs to.
But, I’m in communications, and I know d@mn well how this plays out to the public. Democrats have solid, valid reasons for doing this. Republicans almost certainly will not. But the public will process this as “eh, they all do this,” and that waters down the efficacy of the use of things like stripping members of committee assignments.
Ideally, people wouldn’t elect kooks, but I guess we’re well past that.
I still have trouble believing that this woman is in Congress. This should be required viewing for every member of Congress, but especially the Republicans:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M66VG9tc_6c
@Nightcrawler:
That’s true, but the problem is even worse.
Things like the Iran deal should have been formal treaties, with the common safeguards to prevent the next president, or Trump, from just pulling out on a whim. But passing treaties has also become a partisan bone of contention.
It was never that easy, considering the super majority needed for approval of a treaty by the Senate. Worse yet with multilateral treaties, where in addition to several countries, there were 100 senators to propose changes after the negotiations.
@Jen:
@Kylopod
A benefit in the Dems having stripped Greene of her committee assignments is that it may lead the extremes in both parties to think twice before shooting off an outlandish tweet appealing to their most radical partisans. Turning down the rhetorical heat in Washington, would not be a bad thing.
Stripping Greene of her committee assignments, regardless of the possible blow back was the right thing to do.
@Sleeping Dog:
Marge says she was stripped of her committee assignments because she’s a “white, woman, wife. mother, Christian, conservative, business owner.”
@Jen: I should have made it clear that I was expanding on your comment, not disagreeing with it.
@CSK: Look up Omar’s anti-Semitic remarks, Maxine Waters overall stupidity about confrontations with Trump and his followers. Don’t forget the Bernie buddy who tried to assassinate Cong. Scalise. Censure and/or remove them from office too, if you want to be even-handed. Don’t forget to chastise Pelosi for her insulting gesture of ripping up the State of the Union speech.
@John430:
Thanks for the tip, we will make sure that the man who shot Rep. Scalise and who now sits behind bars is censured and removed from office. We may even strip him of his committee assignments!
@CSK:
More evidence that the woman is delusional.
@John430: Look up Omar’s anti-Semitic remarks, Maxine Waters overall stupidity about confrontations with Trump and his followers. Don’t forget the Bernie buddy who tried to assassinate Cong. Scalise. Censure and/or remove them from office too, if you want to be even-handed. Don’t forget to chastise Pelosi for her insulting gesture of ripping up the State of the Union speech.
I don’t think you looked any of these up or you’d know they are not even close. Omar’s Israel (not Jewish) comments? Waters talking about protesters? Pelosi getting paper ready to be recycled? If you can’t do better, just sit down.
And, John430 illustrates what I was getting at. Somehow, MTG’s bonkers, untethered-to-reality rantings in his mind equals the critical opinions of Omar and Waters.
They aren’t the same things at all, John430.
@Pylon:
Well, tearing up that paper was very disrespectful of the Moronic Orange Ass (what?), but she only damaged Trump’s ego, assuming he even noticed.
Of course, in Cult 45 that’s worse than killing a dozen people by slow torture.
@John430: Nobody gives a shit about your feelings until you demonstrate a capacity to give a shit about others. You elect people that want to fight…well now you got one. Now stop crying and take this “L”.
If you decide to elect people who want to work together rather than fight…come back and see us. Until then–tighten your jock strap. Theres more coming.
@Kathy:
I know how bad it is. It’s really upsetting.
I don’t accept the ‘bullsh*t’ theory, when the idea that they are simply lying fits at least as well.
Calling major liars anything other than ‘liar’ makes them look better. That’s how we get ‘different realities’ or ‘viewpoints differ’ or anything excusing these things as mental illness.
I think she totally deserved it and I don’t have any sympathy for her.
Having said that I do worry that this may start another ratchet in terms of partisan warfare. While I think that, in isolation, breaking the norm about committee assignments for her is completely justified, such things do not exist in isolation. I hope this doesn’t start down a slippery, escalatory slope.
@Barry:
Who’s this “they” you’re referring to? Be more specific. I definitely think MTG is a liar. But that doesn’t mean everyone out there spouting QAnon is.
@John430: That’s some weak-assed false equivalency you’re trying to create.
Really, dude, you’re grasping at straws and missing.
Now sit down and let the grown-ups talk, fool.
Marge is rejoicing in the fact that being kicked off committees now gives her more free time. To do what? Rage-tweet? Spread crackpot paranoid conspiracy theories?
She’s a female Trump. Like him, she got into this for the attention. She’ll do whatever she has to to remain at the top of the news cycle.
Apparently, she’s decided to stop apologizing and go back to full-tilt nutball.
@CSK: Don’t forget the invaluable (or is that unvaluable; I get the 2 confused sooooo easily) service in providing authoritative sourcing for John 430’s forays into whataboutism. Everybody needs good sources or else they end up sounding like cranks.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I never cease to be amazed at such broad complaints with such non-existent specifics.
But if she has been liberated, we should do the whole party a favor and boot all Republicans off all committees, right?
@Andy: Slippery slope considerations are valid for groups in competition. I don’t believe they have much use when we analyze groups in conflict. In my view the operative consideration is which activities bring us closer to exhaustion, which is the only door back to competition. Unfortunately the train has left the station and this dance must be done. What you would hope is behind the scenes Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi are offering reasonable exit ramps to either freeze the escalation level in place or, best case, even move back to good faith competition. That’s impossible when you have member of the body in decision-making positions who has advocated violence against Democrat lawmakers.
Frankly I don’t care about the space lasers, false-flag stuff. No law that says you have to be smart, reasonable, or sane to be in Congress. Violence against colleagues in Congress however is the reddest of red lines. I have no problems with this Standard being applied to Democrat fringe lawmakers as well. The preaching to the Social Media choir needs to end immediately.
“These were words of the past and these things do not represent me, they do not represent my district and they do not represent my values,” Greene said of her past posts and interactions on social media.”
Then just who, and what do they represent?
I’m confused, is she trying to be contrite, with out the hassle of any contrition? Surely she realizes that the only people in her district that aren’t represented by her crazy and vile words, voted against her, and were in the minority.
“But she also attempted to blame “cancel culture” for her troubles and the media for how she’s come across, saying, “big media companies can take teeny, tiny pieces of words that I said, that you have said, any of us, and can portray us into”
Odd argument from an individual trying to distance themselves from a cornucopia of vile, threatening, and batshit crazy talk that they created then exploited any and all public forums, to get it heard by the masses.
@CSK: No, I don’t think she will be Trump’s running mate in 2024 – unless she takes on Brian Kemp in his bid for re-election next year and whips him. I’m rubbing my hands with glee at the prospect of seeing the Georgia GOP in a fratricidal battle.
@SC_Birdflyte:
Who said anything about running mate?
@Kylopod:
Well, I’d say that makes Biden a shoo-in in 2024, but then, I thought Clinton would trounce Trump in 2016.
@CSK: If you look at who MTG’s running mate is in that graphic, that should make it clear it’s more a troll than a serious prediction. I just mashed together several infoboxes from Wikipedia. The percentage of the vote for each candidate came from the 1964 election, the last time the state of Wyoming voted Dem in a presidential race. I then applied that percentage to the present-day voting population of WY to get the vote totals in the graphic. The map also came from ’64, except I changed the color of Teton County, which voted for Goldwater but today is a Dem stronghold, and I also made the other county Biden won in 2020 (more a swing county today) a darker blue to account for his projected 2024 landslide in the state.
@ImProPer:
She’s not yesterday’s nut case, she’s a new Born Again Nutcase. And if you don’t believe the veracity of her current claim, well then what about second chances?
On a related note, murdering his wife is an action of the past and does not represent OJ Simpson at all now.
@Kathy: Oh my favorite part is when she claimed that the House stripped her constituents of their voices by removing her from two committees. As if the only way to have a voice is to have a representative on those two committees….
She really isn’t very bright.
@Kylopod:
Listen, with Q as her running mate, she could really go places.
@Matt:
Still not as bad as her claim to have been censored, on a televised speech in front of Congress.
@Kathy: Yeah there’s a whole list we could run down.
@Andy:
I also hope that, but am fairly certain those hopes are in vain. Repubs have left the reality based world behind and they are vindictive and cruel to boot. They have completely faith-ifized that the squad are baby killing leftist guerillas. When they get control again at least one of them will lose their committee assignments, if not all of them.
In other words, it’s not a regular slippery slope. When the Dems are in charge they get some traction and haul the country partway back up. But once the Republicans regain control they grease up and then it’s a headfirst dive back down the slope.
@Kylopod: Frank is worth reading. In his thesis, lies are different than Bullshit, but they are not mutually exclusive. To borrow and bastardize Stephen Jay Gold, they are overlapping magesteriums.
@Matt:
I’m hoping this person will turn out to be not what Trump was, but what he should have been: a temporary distraction from more important matters.
She does appeal to the same base. But she lacks much political power, and she’ll likely face more blow back from within the GOP. I find it hard that republicans in other states will see fit to primary their representative or senator because they are mean to a freshman representative from Q.
Further, I don’t think the Democrats will make her an equivalent of The Squad. It would be far more useful to focus criticism on the GOP’s leadership in Congress. Yesterday’s vote was more a rebuke of McCarthy and co. than of Ms. Anon.
@Gustopher:
“And if you don’t believe the veracity of her current claim, well then what about second chances?”
I would think a second chance would be preceeded by an overt act of contrition.
MTG, as of yet isn’t seeking a second chance, but merely advancing into a second act. Brings to mind a quote by Donald Barthelme that has preceeded more than one lament of our modern culture, and it’s constant obsession
with perpetual reinvention.
“The Marivaudian being is, according to Poulet, a pastless futureless man, born anew at every instant. The instants are points which organize themselves into a line, but what is important is the instant, not the line. The Marivaudian being has in a sense no history. Nothing follows from what has gone before. He is constantly surprised. He cannot predict his own reaction to events. He is constantly being overtaken by events. A condition of breathlessness and dazzlement surrounds him. In consequence he exists in a certain freshness which seems, if I may so, very desirable.”
@CSK: I’d be happy for her to go anywhere–just as long as she leaves!
@Jim Brown 32:
In that case, I hope we don’t end up in an escalation spiral.
@MarkedMan:
Maybe. I’m a hope-for-the-best-plan-for-the-worst kind of guy. We’ll have to wait and see if the GoP retaliates when they are back in charge of the House.
@Teve: I apologize .
I shouldn’t have been rude.
@Andy:
Are you FUC*ING kidding me, Andy? Seriously? WTF?
You can type that with a straight face after Mitch “I will make Obama a one term President”.
You can type that with a straight face after Merrick Garland?
You can type that with a straight face after Amy Coney Barrett?
You can type that with a straight face after the last four effing years?
Goddmamnit man! What does it take for you to get off your “both sides” schitck??
Jesus
@Jim Brown 32:
You are a much better human being than I am.
@Jen: Well, OK. Then how about Biden’s plagiarism? In academic circles that’s unforgiveable. In Pelosi’s world that’s a merit badge.
@Kathy: So, you’d boot all the opposition off, eh? What a good little goose-stepper you are!
Every time a Trumpie shows up I wonder where in the hell they’re getting their news from….
@John430:
Totally tangential from your replies on this thread, any thoughts on Marjorie Greene? How about her recent dissonant behavior in the house? If she is indeed breaking from her past, do you consider this to be a positive? Just curious out here in left field.
@Jax:
Wherever it is, it also appears to render them immune to irony.
@Andy:
To unpack @EddieInCA a little bit…
What, exactly, do you think Republicans could escalate to at this point that they haven’t already shown they are willing to do? Literally killing Democratic politicians? We’ almost go there. What else is left? What position of restraint and unwillingness have the GOP actually shown, that they might now abandon if the Dems are too aggressive?
@DrDaveT: Fer real. “Oh, I’m scared Republicans will retaliate!!!”
They came really close to getting the Vice President of the United States of America killed on January 6th, 2021. FULL STOP.
If they’re willing to sic their vicious hounds on a MEMBER OF THEIR OWN PARTY…..well, that horse has already left the barn as far as their willingness to “retaliate”.
What’s that saying? “When they show us who they really are, believe them?”
@John430: And Biden isn’t a faculty member at any university. Problem solved. Thanks for playing! 😀
@John430:..Don’t forget to chastise Pelosi for her insulting gesture of ripping up the State of the Union speech.
Insulting gesture like your boyfriend’s directive to “grab them by the pussy.”
@John430:
It’s not a merit badge, it’s just not relevant. It’s something that has been known for decades and that the voters decided wasn’t sufficient to shift their vote in favor of the least honest man to ever hold the office, a man who during his single, misbegotten term uttered over 30,000 verifiable lies.
And all that lying? For you and the rest of the Trump cult, THAT is the “merit badge.”
Now, once again, sit down and let the grown-ups talk, fool.
@John430: ” Then how about Biden’s plagiarism? In academic circles that’s unforgiveable. In Pelosi’s world that’s a merit badge.”
Well, when Biden applies for tenure at a university that should be taken into account. However repurposing other people’s speeches in politics is not the same thing at all, since politicians are not being judged on their scholarship. If this is the best you can do, you should just give up. It’s like continuing to whine about “57 states” whenever anyone mentions Trump’s lies