US representative clashes with UK reporter and tells her ‘go back to own country’ in tense interview moment
US representative Marjorie Taylor Greene snapped at a UK journalist and instructed her to "return to her own nation" during a tense interaction yesterday (26 March). The divisive Georgia politician, 50, declined to address any questions from Sky News correspondent Martha Kelner after detecting her British accent. Greene - commonly known as MTG - seemed irritated by the mere sound of Kelner's voice in the startling video, which has now spread widely online.
She fielded questions from media personnel after leading a DOGE committee session, where she pushed for eliminating government funds for public broadcasters like NPR and PBS. While speaking with reporters following the "Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the heads of NPR and PBS Accountable" meeting, Kelner started to ask about US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. He ranked among the senior officials in the Signal chat group that The Atlantic's editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was mistakenly added to by security adviser Mike Waltz as they talked about military actions against the Houthis in Yemen. The alarming event saw an unnamed official label Waltz as a "f***ing idiot."
Before Kelner finished her question about Hegseth, Greene interrupted to ask: "What country are you from?" After the journalist said she came from the UK, the Republican shut down the conversation completely.
"We don't care about your view and your coverage," Greene stated. "Why don't you return to your nation, where you have a significant migrant issue? You should worry about your own borders."
Kelner persisted and asked if the congresswoman "cared about American lives being endangered" due to the Signal chat mistake. Greene evaded the question again, instead replying: "Let me tell you something - do you care about people from your country? What about all the women that are raped by migrants?"
"You're finished. I don't care about your fake news," she fumed, before turning to an American reporter and asking if he had "a relevant question." In what appeared to be support for Kelner, the US journalist then urged Greene to provide an "answer to what [Kelner] had asked." But the congresswoman remained firm and responded: "I'm not answering her question because I don't care about her network."
After he repeated Kelner's question, Greene again chose to avoid the subject and instead shifted the discussion to what she described as the "total neglect of operational security" during Joe Biden's administration.
"You ought to discuss the Biden administration and how they opened our borders to terrorists, cartels, child sex trafficking, human trafficking and drug trafficking across our borders for four years," she declared.
"The Trump administration is performing excellently and I support their statements. My response to you is I'm grateful to President Trump, that he is guiding us away from conflicts, that he's stopping the war in Ukraine where American lives might have been lost if Joe Biden remained President today, whether he approved or not."
"We're discussing NPR and PBS today. We're talking about false information that was supported with federal money from American taxpayers. That's what this concerns today."
This isn't the first instance Greene has gone viral for negative reasons - she created controversy in 2022 after personally sharing a video of herself appearing to kick a young activist.
And just to be clear, Greene - we British people have fantastic accents.
