Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene sparred with 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl in a heated back-and-forth after she was confronted about her inflammatory rhetoric.
Greene’s recent political transformation from MAGA loyalist to Trump critic came with a vow to stop “taking part in toxic politics.”
But her appearance Sunday on CBS News’s 60 Minutes suggested that the Georgia congresswoman, who intends to resign from Congress next month, isn’t quite ready to tone down her trademark combativeness.
Greene, 51, railed against Washington’s divisive culture during the interview, saying, “It’s the most toxic political culture, and it’s not helping the American people.”
“But you contributed to that,” Stahl, a longtime CBS correspondent, pointed out. “You, you were out there pounding, insulting people.”
Greene shot back, “Lesley, you’ve contributed to it as well with your—”
“Me?” Stahl, 83, said with a smile.
“Yes, you’re accusatory, just like you did just then,” Greene replied.
“I know you’re accusing me, but I’m smiling,” Stahl began, before Greene interjected, “You’re accusing me! But we don’t have to accuse one another.”
“I want you to respond to what you have done in terms of insulting people, yelling at people, and then saying—” Stahl said calmly.
“I’d like for you to respond for that,” Greene snapped. “No you can respond to that.”
“I don’t insult people,” said Stahl, who has reported for 60 Minutes since 1991.
“You do in the way you question, and you’re accusing me right now,” Greene said. It’s unclear how the fiery exchange concluded, as the program then moved on to Greene’s break with the GOP.
Hostility and inflammatory comments—often racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, and conspiratorial—were long a hallmark of Greene’s politics.
But she pledged to change after President Donald Trump excommunicated her from MAGA last month over her support for releasing the Epstein files and labeled her a “traitor,” which she says directly led to death threats against her and her family.
“I would like to say, humbly, I’m sorry for taking part in the toxic politics; it’s very bad for our country,” Greene said in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on State of the Union. “It’s been something I’ve thought about a lot, especially since Charlie Kirk was assassinated.”
She said she had spent time “working” to “put down the knives in politics,” adding, “I really want to just see people be kind to one another.”
Greene’s interview on the CBS News Sunday night show comes as the network undergoes a makeover under new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, who was appointed by Trump-friendly Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison.
Ellison, the son of Trump ally and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, took over the network in August after his company, Skydance, merged with Paramount, CBS’s parent company.
Regulators approved the network’s change of hands after it paid Trump $16 million to end the president’s legally dubious lawsuit over the editing of 60 Minutes’ interview with Kamala Harris.
