Watch Marjorie Taylor Greene Compare Donald Trump to Nelson Mandela and Jesus

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene believes that with his criminal indictment, Donald Trump has entered the upper echelons of martyrdom.

Trump is the first former president ever to be criminally charged. He is set to be arraigned Tuesday afternoon in a Manhattan court for his role in hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Republicans have rushed to his defense, with Greene traveling to New York to hold a rally in his support outside the courthouse.

In an interview on the conservative Right Side Broadcasting Network, Greene likened Trump to other famous people who have been arrested, such as Nelson Mandela and Jesus.

Mandela was arrested for his opposition to racial segregation in South Africa. Jesus was arrested for performing miracles and founding a new religion. Trump was indicted for allegedly paying to cover up an extramarital affair. The charges against him have yet to be unsealed, but they reportedly include a felony charge of falsifying business records and violating campaign finance law.

Same, same.

On Tuesday, as Donald Trump is set to be formally arraigned, tens of people came out in support of the twice-impeached and now criminally indicted former president.

As with an earlier pro-Trump protest in late March, there appeared to be a very large group of media reporters for every one Trump supporter.

The protest also hosted other Republicans especially unfit for office, like Representatives George Santos and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Greene, alas, was drowned out by the few protesters there and unable to carry out whatever performance she had planned.

Indeed, whatever words she did have to say were likely heard more by the cameras than by any protesters.

On one hand, the Trump indictment has already brought out the worst instincts in the political media. TV networks have incessantly blared every minor development in Trump’s movements, from Florida to New York.

But it’s not just Fox News; other networks are guilty too. And with CBS’s latest appallingly deferential interview with Greene, there’s reason to worry that the establishment media has no intention of heeding lessons from 2016.

Surely, the media ought to be present for Trump’s arraignment and suspected protests. But the sheer disproportionality doesn’t portend well. If tens of radicals protesting the indictment of a former president for using a shell company to pay hush money to a porn actress garner this much attention, events like a Florida lawmaker being arrested for advocating for abortion rights or three Tennessee lawmakers facing expulsion and even assault after standing with children protesting gun violence warrant so much more.

But given the hardened conventions of mainstream television media, we already know what will get more attention.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wants everyone protesting against Donald Trump on Tuesday to be arrested for being too loud.

Trump is the first former president ever to be criminally charged. He is set to be arraigned Tuesday afternoon in a Manhattan court for his role in hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Republicans have rushed to his defense, with Greene traveling to New York to hold a rally in his support outside the courthouse.

“I’m here in NY to protest with my voice against the weaponization of the justice system on innocent President Trump, but the counter protestors are coming to commit assault that can cause audible damage to everyone’s ears including NYPD,” she tweeted Tuesday morning, without any evidence of the supposed audible assault.

“If counter protestors are violating freedom of speech and committing assault, they should be arrested.”

She singled out New York Mayor Eric Adams at the protest, saying, “You send your henchmen down here to commit assault against people by making loud noises.” In a video of her claim, most of the noise is from her speaking and one person blowing repeatedly on a whistle. (As it turns out, that person was a Trump supporter who didn’t even realize Greene was there or that he was drowning her out.)

Greene is a big fan of freedom of speech, but apparently not when you’re exercising that right to oppose her.

Adams had warned Greene and her supporters to “be on your best behavior.”

“New York City is our home, not a playground for your misplaced anger,” he told a press conference Monday night.

Greene hit back at Adams for “trying to intimidate, threaten, and stop me from using my 1st amendment rights to peacefully protest,” a claim that further highlights the hypocrisy of her call for counterprotesters’ arrest.

At the time of writing, both the pro- and anti-Trump crowds were fairly small, so still not clear what audible “assault” Greene meant.

Tennessee Republican Representative Justin Lafferty—who once valorized the three-fifths compromise—reportedly shoved Black Tennessee Representative Justin Jones on the floor of the statehouse Monday night. Jones and two other Democratic lawmakers currently face threats of expulsion from the legislature for breaking “decorum” by interrupting proceedings to advocate for students protesting gun violence. The world waits with bated breath to see if Lafferty’s actions also qualify as breaking decorum.

Jones captured the moment on video where Lafferty seems to have shoved him.

The shove came amid an escalation by state Republicans to silence and ignore not only their fellow lawmakers but also thousands of residents demanding action so children stop being killed at school.

On Monday, thousands of Tennessee students, parents, and residents descended upon the state Capitol for the second time in the week since the mass shooting at a school in Nashville that left three children and three adults dead. The monumental crowd of people marched to the state Capitol building, leading chants and singing songs, with one student simply saying, “We all just want to live through high school.”

Children in grade school and even younger were seen in full force, shaming Tennessee Republicans for their inaction, a week after students just like them were shot dead at school.

On Monday evening, as protesters entered the chamber, chanting from the gallery and demanding lawmakers’ attention, Lafferty and Jones both began recording the scene on their phones. Lafferty then turned toward Jones and appeared to shove the Democrat. A voice is heard in Jones’s video saying, “Hey, get your hands off me.”

Before shoving a fellow lawmaker on the House floor, Lafferty was perhaps best known for falsely suggesting that the three-fifths compromise—which allowed slaveholding states to count 60 percent of their slave populations in order to gain more representation in Congress, while not giving enslaved people any rights—was somehow an effort to end slavery, rather than to uphold it.

Jones and fellow Democrats Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson have been especially invested in standing alongside the thousands demanding action. Now Tennessee Republicans are pushing to punish them, on the basis that the trio walked up to the well of the House during last Thursday’s protest, which violated “rules of decorum.”

The trio say they did so only after being repeatedly silenced by House Speaker Cameron Sexton; the Democrats’ mics were allegedly cut off throughout the week whenever they tried to speak about gun violence or about the thousands protesting right outside the building. Sexton had the gall to call the trio’s actions an “insurrection.”

Jones accused Sexton of spending “more time on Twitter this weekend talking about a fake insurrection than he did about the deaths of six people including 9-year-old children.”

Sexton’s former caucus member, Republican Representative Terri Lynn Weaver, attended an actual insurrection: January 6, which she called an “epic and historic day gathering with fellow Patriots from all over the nation.” Weaver was not expelled from the Tennessee state legislature.

Florida Democratic leaders were arrested during a protest for abortion rights, just hours after the state Senate passed a bill banning the procedure at six weeks.

Senate Bill 300 prohibits abortion after six weeks, down from 15 weeks and before many people even know they are pregnant. It also lowers the amount of money that the state Department of Health is required to spend on pregnancy and parental support, but dramatically increases the amount of state funds given to anti-abortion pregnancy centers.

People gathered Monday night in the park outside City Hall in Tallahassee to protest the bill. A group of about 12, including Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried and Senate Minority  Leader Lauren Book, sat in a circle inside part of the park that was closed at sunset. They held hands and sang songs including “Lean On Me.”

Police had warned the protesters they would be arrested if they did not vacate the barricaded area, and when they continued to demonstrate, law enforcement arrested the dozen who were seated.

Fried has already changed her Twitter profile picture to a photo of her arrest and urged Floridians to get out and vote.

At the start of the protest, Book reminded those gathered that “the battle is not over.” She had given a powerful speech on the Senate floor earlier in the day before the bill was voted through.

“We must work to make things different, because abortion is health care,” she said, “and because women deserve to be equal & free.”

If it becomes law, as it is expected to, S.B. 300 will have a significant negative effect across the rest of the South. Florida currently allows abortion up to 15 weeks and has become an abortion haven in the region, as many neighboring states have imposed harsher restrictions on the procedure since Roe v. Wade was overturned.