FROM THE HILL: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday defended Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and referred to her as a “good” Republican at a CNN town hall.
The Vermont senator suggested that elected Republicans are “doing less of representing their districts and their states than just swearing allegiance to the president of the United States.”
Greene has publicly clapped back at her party over not locking in a plan to keep Affordable Care Act premium subsidies from expiring at the end of the year. This has earned praise from Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).
Greene has also criticized her party leadership by signing on to a bipartisan resolution to have the Department of Justice release files tied to Jeffrey Epstein.
“There’s a lot of weak Republican men, and they’re more afraid of strong Republican women,” Greene told The Washington Post earlier this week. “So they always try to marginalize the strong Republican women that actually want to do something and actually want to achieve.”
At the town hall, Sanders (incredibly) said, “There are some decent, honest Republicans.”
“So I never thought that I would say this, but you have somebody like Marjorie Taylor Greene saying, ‘You know what, I was elected by my constituents, that’s who I am beholden to, not the president or the United States,’” Sanders said. “So there are good Republicans out there.”
“If [President] Trump would leave them alone for five minutes and not threaten them with, with a primary if they stood up and did the right thing, I think we can make progress,” the senator added.
Sanders’s ally Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was also at the town hall. CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked her if she and Greene could work together.
“In terms of bipartisan legislation on health care, I’m more than open to doing that,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “But it’s not just about talking the talk, you’ve got to walk the walk.”
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