As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Patricia Murphy points out in a new column, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene – who made national news multiple times during Joe Biden’s presidency for booing and heckling at his State of the Union addresses – this week had her own constituents arrested and thrown in jail at a town hall for exercising the same freedom of expression.

Read the Atlanta Journal-Constitution column below:

Patricia Murphy: Marjorie Taylor Greene heckled the president. Her own hecklers went to jail.

Key Points:

• On the one hand, you have to admire U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s willingness to do an in-person town hall meeting in the first place. With death threats now a part of her daily reality, she’d have a legitimate excuse to avoid public confrontations.
  
  
• But Greene has consistently done town halls, and avoiding confrontation isn’t part of the MTG brand, if you haven’t noticed. In fact, Greene has built her bring-it-on persona on a few well-timed, highly visible public confrontations, starting with heckling President Joe Biden at his State of the Union address in 2022.
  
  
• When the Democratic president called for stronger border security, Greene and U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert started to chant, “Build the wall!” to demand the U.S. erect a wall on the Southern border with Mexico — as then-former President Donald Trump had promised.
  
  
• The next year, Greene was back at the State of the Union, this time wearing a white fur-trimmed coat as she yelled, “You lie! You lie!” at President Biden after he claimed some Republicans wanted to cut Medicare and Social Security. As she sat down, she yelled, “Liar!” one more time.
  
  
• In 2024, Greene attended the State of the Union in a bright red MAGA hat and matching red blazer and disrupted the speech again. “What about Laken Riley?” she screamed at Biden in the middle of his remarks, referring to the Georgia woman murdered by an immigrant who came into the country illegally. “Say her name!“
  
  
• With those many confrontations behind her, you might have expected Greene would be ready to mix it up Tuesday night in Acworth, the most liberal part of her recently redrawn 14th congressional district. But a back-and-forth wasn’t part of the plan. […]
  
  
• […]
  
  
• But Greene made it clear she was not there to listen to her new constituents. She was there to talk to them, answering pre-selected questions as they appeared on an overhead screen. […]
  
  
• As the town hall went on, more constituents were ejected, including a second man subdued with a Taser after he grabbed the officer removing him by the neck. Altogether, three of Greene’s constituents were kept overnight in the Acworth jail and charged with crimes, some of them serious.
  
  
• But Greene seemed pleased at the end of the night,
  
  
• Talking to a gaggle of reporters about what had just happened, she said, “I’m glad they got thrown out. That’s exactly what I wanted to see happen,” she said.
  
  
• “This isn’t a political rally or a protest. I held a town hall on April 17th. You know who was out of line? The protesters.”
  
  
• No public official, including Greene, should be subjected to threats, attacks or harassment from members of the public. And the police had their job to do.
  
  
• But many of the voices of dissent ejected from the town hall Tuesday night were just that - dissent and disagreement. Greene has exercised her right to dissent in the past, even with the president of the United States. Her constituents have the same right, too.