The single most ridiculous dodge by a Republican senator on Marjorie Taylor Greene

Even as President Joe Biden works to shore up Democratic support for his $1.9 trillion Covid-19 stimulus plan and the country remains in a pitched fight against the virus, all the political world is talking about these days is Marjorie Taylor Greene.

The Georgia Republican congresswoman’s series of extreme and intolerant comments and social media posts have forced House Republicans to consider whether she should be stripped of her committee assignments — and prompted a debate over whether Greene’s decidedly Trump-y version of conservatism has a place in the GOP tent.

It’s a massive story — and one that affects the future of every single Republican elected official in the country.

So, what does Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville make of all of the MTG mishigas?

“I haven’t looked at what all she’s done,” the freshman senator told CNN’s Ted Barrett on Tuesday. “I’d have to hold back a statement on that…[I’ve] been traveling. This weather’s been a little rough. [Didn’t] look at any news or whatever.”

Uh, WHAT?

The weather didn’t allow a United States senator to know about the Marjorie Taylor Greene story?

I mean, yes, there was snow in DC this week. And surely, that likely complicated Tuberville’s travel plans. But here’s what it didn’t do: Make it so that cable TV, the internet and phones stopped working.

Which leaves us to conclude one of two things:

1) Tuberville is using the weather as a shield to keep from commenting on the MTG morass.

OR

2) Tuberville truly didn’t look at the news (or his phone or anything) for the last week or so.

For the senator’s sake, I am going to assume that No. 1 is the actual explanation. And he would be far from the first elected official to dodge a question by professing ignorance or over-busyness.(So many senators — and House members — fake phone calls when trying to avoid reporters’ questions.) Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) told CNN this on Tuesday about the MGT situation: “I don’t know enough about her. There’s 435 members in the House. I have a hard time keeping track of what 100 senators are doing. So, you’ll have to ask somebody that’s followed it better than I have.”

But given Tuberville’s track record of, well, not knowing some stuff (or, at least, saying things that make it sound like he doesn’t know things), we probably can’t rule out No. 2 entirely as a possibility.

And that second option would be far, far worse. After all, it’s a senator’s job to, generally speaking, keep up on news of the day — especially when it deals with a member of your own party who has expressed anti-Semitic and Islamophobic sentiments — not to mention embracing the dangerous QAnon conspiracy theory.

So, let’s all hope Tuberville just used the weather as a convenient excuse to say nothing. The alternative is not great.