Stepmum fires back at Marjorie Taylor Greene after ‘homophobic’ attack
Randi Weingarten said she was ‘vilified’ by Marjorie Taylor Greene. (Getty/MSNBC)
Stepmum Randi Weingarten isn’t staying silent about Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “vile” and “homophobic” verbal attack after the far-right politician accused her of not being a real mother.
The Republican representative for Georgia launched a verbal tirade against Weingarten during a House Select Subcommittee hearing on Wednesday (26 April) in which she accused the American Federation of Teachers president of being “nothing but a political activist”.
“You need to admit that you’re just a political activist,” Green said during the hearing. “Not a teacher, not a mother and not a medical doctor.”
Before she could finish, congressman Raul Ruiz defended Weingarten from the unwarranted attack by calling Greene’s tirade “reflective of the cruel, personal attacks to any adoptive mother who loves their children”.
The lesbian union boss, who clarified during the hearing that she is a “mother by marriage”, said days later on Friday (29 April) that she had been “vilified” by Greene “for just trying to stand up for people”.
“What she did, it’s just this dehumanisation that you see autocrats do, and you see people who don’t want to solve problems do,” she said. “What’s unfortunate is that it’s so venal and so mean … I can take it, I’m a public figure.”
Weingarten went on to compare Greene’s verbal attack to the Republican Party’s “undermining of trans kids”.
“I felt like I was taking one for the team. But the vile, homophobic nature of it was pathetic. And the undermining of families was pathetic.”
While not exactly unsurprising, Greene’s confrontation prompted a wave of criticism from political representatives nationwide.
Florida Democrat Maxwell Frost described the Republican as “bigoted” and “close-minded” for believing that “people who adopt their children are lesser than” birth parents.
“I rise today as a proud adoptee,” Froest said during a House speech. “A son with two loving parents who provided me with all the love and support a child could ask for. But yet, I heard in this chamber a few days ago, someone saying that my parents aren’t real parents.”
“Let me be clear – I am their child, they are my parents.”
The criticism even crossed party lines after Republican politician Michael Steele said her comments “struck such a raw nerve for me“.
“To think that a Marjorie Taylor Greene could look at my mother and say she’s not a mother? Well, you need to shut the you-know-what up and step back, because motherhood is something that comes from the heart.”
Greene is known for her extreme, far-right views. Earlier this month, she doubled down on inflammatory statements made in a 2022 interview, where she called the Democrats “a party of paedophiles” – because they support gender-affirming care for trans young people.
“I would definitely say so, they support grooming children,” she said, confirming that her view has not changed.
“Even Joe Biden, the president himself, supports children being sexualised and having transgender surgeries … sexualising children is what paedophiles do to children.”
On Tuesday (25 April), the Republican conspiracy theorist accused trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney of being “one of the biggest paedophiles in America today” in an MTG: Battleground podcast episode that was removed online two days later.
