Marjorie Taylor Greene: 'Of Course I'm Sorry'

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene started the day with a defiant tweet about "moron" Democrats after they stripped her of her committee posts, and she continued the theme later in a press conference on Friday. "If I was on a committee, I'd be wasting my time because my conservative values wouldn't be heard, and neither would my district's," she said, per the Hill. "Now I have a lot of free time on my hands, which means I can talk to a whole lot more people all over this country."

• "I feel free," Greene told reporters outside the Capitol, per Fox News. "You know what's happening on these committees. ... We have basically a tyrannically controlled government right now."
• Greene sparred with the media at times. When a CNN reporter asked if she would explicitly apologize for some of her most egregious previous views, she responded by asking if the network would apologize for its coverage of the Trump-Russia story. But the New York Times notes that when a different reporter asked essentially the same question, Greene offered what the newspaper calls her "most unequivocal apology to date." Her response: “Of course I'm sorry for saying all those things that are wrong and offensive. And I sincerely mean that, and I'm happy to say that. I think it's good to say when we’ve done something wrong."

• In regard to the former president, she asserted that he still has the support of Republican voters. "The party is his," she said. "It doesn't belong to anybody else."
• Watch the news conference in full at CSPAN.
• In the Washington Post, Elahe Izadi observes that the media is still trying to figure out how to cover Greene. Reporters who once asked for reaction to Trump tweets are now asking for reaction to statements by Greene, and she is currently a staple on cable shows and in newspapers. "All of that coverage has some wondering whether the media is devoting too much of a spotlight on a freshman lawmaker in a minority party—and, as a result, turning her into a star," writes Izadi. The story digs in on that.
• A post at FiveThirtyEight notes that Greene isn't all that popular nationally. Of the 52% who have an opinion, the split is 15% favorable and 37% unfavorable. That negative 22-point gap is second only to Mitch McConnell's 39-point gap among lawmakers in the survey.
• At her press conference, Greene spoke about her confrontation of Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg as he pushed for gun-control policies, notes the Wall Street Journal. She said an armed student held her high school hostage when she was in 11th grade, and she thinks people should be able to carry guns to stop such situations. "David Hogg was an adult when I talked to him," she said. "I'm very opposed to those policies. And so being in the same situation as David Hogg, my voice matters too. And so, no, I'm not sorry for telling him he shouldn't push for gun control." (This 1990 AFP story describes the standoff at Greene's high school.)
• The K File at CNN runs through the old posts and views that got Greene into hot water.

(More Marjorie Taylor Greene stories.)