Liz Cheney Rebukes Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Putin Rant

On Friday, former Representative Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, rebuked Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s rant defending Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It has been a little over two years since Putin launched a full-scale invasion into Ukraine in February 2022. As the conflict rages on, support for the war-torn country is dwindling among Republican U.S. lawmakers. Greene, a Georgia Republican, has been a vocal critic of additional U.S. aid being sent to the Eastern European nation.

Meanwhile, the Senate has passed a $95 billion foreign aid package, including $61 billion for Ukraine. The House has yet to vote on any legislation for additional funding to Kyiv, but House GOP Leader Steve Scalise from Louisiana told reporters on Thursday that House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, had been talking with the White House about a funding package that includes several GOP demands.

On Friday, journalist Aaron Rupar shared a clip on X, formerly Twitter, of Greene on right-wing host Steve Bannon’s show War Room ranting about members of Congress who support additional aid to Ukraine.

“This whole thing is the most repulsive, disgusting thing happening and the American people are the ones writing the check,” the congresswoman said. “And I absolutely hate everybody here that is doing this. I mean, I seriously hate them for doing this to the American people and paying for the murder and slaughter of people in Ukraine.”

Greene continued: “Vladimir Putin has not said he wants to go march across Europe and take Europe, and the reality is Ukraine is not even a NATO member nation. But if you want to know something [U.S. Department of Defense Secretary] Lloyd Austin and the others here more than anything want to send your uncles, your cousins and your sons and daughters to the frontlines in Ukraine because that is the only country that for some weird, sick and evil reason that they care about.”

Cheney responded to the video, writing on X: “Once again Moscow Marge is busy deploying her Kremlin talking points. Is she a useful idiot or is she intentionally spreading Putin’s lies? Either way it’s pathetic and unAmerican.”

Newsweek reached out to Greene’s office via email for comment.

Bannon told Newsweek via telephone on Friday when asked about additional Ukraine funding, “This is the globalist elites prolonging the agony of Ukrainian people.”

He said that if Ukraine gets to the negotiating table with Russia now, “Putin’s gonna stop. If you don’t get to the negotiating table, the Ukrainian army is going to collapse.”

Meanwhile, Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for House Affairs during the Obama administration, told Newsweek via text message on Saturday: “The Russians have always wanted total control of Ukraine and nothing has ever stopped that but the collapse of the Soviet Union and Ukraine’s own strong self defense. Taking away American support for Ukraine’s self-defense is the best way to guarantee a Russian military takeover of Ukraine, not peace in our time.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also warned of a future without peace in a video meeting of the Ukrainian fundraising group UNITED24 on Sunday.

“It’s important to specifically address the [U.S.] Congress: if the Congress doesn’t help Ukraine, Ukraine will lose the war,” he said. “If Ukraine loses this war, other countries will be attacked. This is a fact.”

However, Putin has said that Moscow has “no interest” in fighting with members of NATO, despite fears that the Russian leader would invade the Baltic states or Poland next.

Cheney has criticized Greene’s stance on Russia and Ukraine on several occasions. In November 2022, Cheney condemned her for saying that “not another penny will go to Ukraine” while speaking at a rally for former President Donald Trump in Sioux City, Iowa.

Cheney wrote in an X post at the time: “This is exactly what Putin wants. If we’d had Republicans like this in the 1980s, we would have lost the Cold War.”

“There are two things that are in the past,” Greene responded at the time. “1. You and your Daddy’s Republican Party that sent our military to fight foreign wars on the backs of American tax dollars and didn’t win a damn thing. 2. You.”

Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who served under former President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2009, served Wyoming’s at-large district from 2017 to 2023.

She was House Republicans’ third-ranked leader until she emerged as a vocal critic of Trump for his actions surrounding the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Cheney eventually lost her position as chair of the House Republican Conference and then lost the 2022 primary election in Wyoming to Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman.