Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t the only one pushing the bounds of decorum

Tuesday night wasn’t the first time a Republican member of Congress accused a Democratic president of lying during a speech on Capitol Hill.

But the aftermath has unfolded far differently. Nor was it even the only instance this week of a questionable action by a GOP member of Congress pushing the bounds of congressional decorum — a sequence of events that underlines the continued degradation of our political norms.

In a new interview with the New York Times, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) essentially shrugged off her conduct at President Biden’s State of the Union address and said she wasn’t at all concerned about House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) reprimanding her. “Not one single bit,” she said. “I have the speaker’s support, and he has mine.”

Greene’s outburst, perhaps intentionally, mirrored Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R-S.C.) infamous “You lie” shout during Barack Obama’s 2009 speech.

But the fallout back then was instantaneous, including from Wilson and his fellow Republicans.

After the outburst, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) went on CNN and said there was “no place for it in that setting or any other and he should apologize immediately.” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) called it an “inappropriate remark.” “I think we ought to treat the president with respect,” Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) added.

Wilson apologized almost immediately. He issued a statement that very night — about an hour after the speech concluded — saying he had “let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the president’s remarks.”

“I extend sincere apologies to the president for this lack of civility,” Wilson added. He even called White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to atone.

The Democratic-controlled House a few days later formally rebuked Wilson, passing a resolution of disapproval. It was mostly a party-line vote, but seven Republicans joined Democrats.

The scene was so controversial at the time that Wilson became the first member of Congress to be reprimanded for jeering the president. The New York Times ran a headline calling it “a Rare Breach of Protocol” and noted that Wilson “seemed rattled” as he quickly departed the chamber.

Greene is far from rattled or apologetic, and such breach of protocol is no longer so rare.

At last year’s State of the Union, President Biden was speaking about toxic burn pits and was building toward mentioning the death of his cancer-stricken son Beau when Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) yelled out. She sought to blame him for the deaths of 13 soldiers during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Boebert, like Greene today and unlike Wilson, quickly doubled-down rather than apologize.

Republicans then and now have compared such conduct to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) demonstratively ripping up a copy of Donald Trump’s 2020 State of the Union address at its conclusion, but that was a silent protest. They also falsely claimed that Pelosi had broken the law.

(Some Democrats also booed and groaned at Trump during his 2018 State of the Union, with Pelosi urging them to quiet down. McCarthy on a couple occasions Tuesday night shushed his fellow Republicans as they jeered.)

Another dissimilarity between the Greene case and Pelosi’s is that Greene’s conduct appears to violate House rules on decorum. A 1999 Congressional Research Service report stated that “References to the President that have been ruled unparliamentary include calling the President a ‘liar.’” Unlike Wilson, Greene actually used that specific noun in her jeers.

McCarthy has given no sign that Greene could face any reprimand, whether formal or otherwise. On Wednesday morning, he called his members “passionate” and indicated that he was more concerned that they were “taking the bait” when Biden sought to “goad” them.

Less well-publicized is what happened at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee later Wednesday.

While questioning former Twitter executives, Greene’s fellow House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) accused them of “knowingly and willingly” interfering with the 2020 election through their content-moderation decisions. He then said they would soon be arrested.

“That’s the bad news: It’s going to get worse,” Higgins said. “Because this is the investigation part; later comes the arrest part. Your attorneys are familiar with that.”

Higgins alluded to future hours-long depositions that the witnesses would be subjected to and, without giving those involved a chance to respond, relinquished his time.

Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.) raised a point of order, declaring what had happened “awfully close to witness intimidation” and asking Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) to intervene. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) asked for clarification on the rules about accusing someone of a crime.

Both labeled what transpired a “threat.” Comer said he didn’t see “any witness threatening” and merely urged members to observe decorum and treat witnesses with “respect.”

Whether Higgins’s conduct violates the rules is less clear than whether Greene’s did, but House rules treat such accusations seriously, and members have been rebuked for lodging these kinds of claims in the context of a hearing.

Perhaps the most significant parallel involves Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). The House Ethics Committee in 2020 admonished him for suggestively tweeting that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen had engaged in extramarital affairs, without any evidence, on the eve of critical testimony Cohen was about to give on Trump.

The committee found that Gaetz’s conduct didn’t amount to witness tampering but did violate House Rule XXIII, which requires members to conduct themselves “in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.”

In another instance last year, the conservative Heritage Foundation filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics accusing Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) of “knowingly and intentionally defaming” a witness she suggested had committed perjury. (The situation hasn’t been resolved, and House Republicans voted to gut that office last month. Also, unlike Higgins, Porter detailed specifically why she thought the witness had broken the law.)

The House Practice Manual contains procedures to be followed under such circumstances. It states:

This section adds that a public session can only continue if the committee determines that further evidence will not tend to defame or incriminate the person.

While it’s increasingly common in the Trump era for politics to devolve into talking about your opponents going to jail — Trump himself promoted Higgins’s comments — lodging such claims in a congressional setting is another matter. And that goes especially when it could be construed as an attempt to impact testimony, as was alleged but not proven in the Gaetz case.

Just as with the Greene and Wilson cases, a key difference between the Higgins and Gaetz cases is that Gaetz expressed contrition. He deleted the tweet shortly thereafter and said his “tweet did not conform to my own standard that I maintain for myself and for my conduct.”

The committee also expressed reluctance to act as “the social media police.”

Now a similar and arguably more serious charge has been levied by a member in an actual hearing. But given the way things are trending and the GOP’s control of the House, we should hardly expect any sanction. And the bounds will continue to be pushed beyond where they were just a few short years ago.

“The broader challenge here is that the rules of the House aren’t self-enforcing,” said Sarah Binder, an expert on congressional rules at the Brookings Institution. “Any effort to address rule or ethics violations would inevitably require a majority vote of the House to enforce. And there’s no sign in these early days of the 118th House that the new House Republican majority is eager to address any questions of speech by its members.”