Right-wing rabble rouser Marjorie Taylor Greene said she was locked out of Twitter after posting a video using a Dr. Dre song without permission.
The Georgia Representative, a proponent of the “stop the steal” movement that claims Donald Trump didn’t lose the presidency, made a self-congratulatory video about herself following the disastrous vote for Speaker of the House where she and other hard-line Republicans held the government hostage with their demands.
The soundtrack to the video was none other than hip-hop legend Dr. Dre’s classic tune “Still D.R.E.” In the video, she walks through the Capitol building and appears to take a call from Donald Trump. The final vote count, for now, Speaker Kevin McCarthy is shown and then the words “it’s time to begin.. and they can’t stop what’s coming.”
Greene told TMZ she was locked out of her Twitter account for posting the video. Dre reportedly sent a cease and desist to Greene with a harshly worded letter and a message: “I don’t license my music to politicians, especially someone as divisive and hateful as this one.”
Howard King, the lawyer for Dr. Dre, wrote the cease and desist letter. “You are wrongfully exploiting this work through the various social media outlets to promote your divisive and hateful political agenda,” King said. This part is great too:
“One might expect that, as a member of Congress, you would have a passing familiarity with the laws of our country. It’s possible, though, that laws governing intellectual property are a little too arcane and insufficiently popular for you to really have spent much time on. … [We] think an actual lawmaker should be making laws not breaking laws.”
Greene is pretty used to being owned by everyone but in modern-day politics you get to shape things however you want, truth be damned. She responded by saying “While I appreciate the creative chord progression, I would never play your words of violence against women and police officers, and your glorification of the thug life and drugs.”
That’s quite the twisty pretzel of rationalization. Greene is just one of many Republican politicians who eschew copyright law and just play whatever song they want to at rallies. Trump used to do this kind of thing all the time with little to no consequences, so all the mini-Trumps at the Capital will obviously do the same.
Greene and others live to “own the libs” at any cost, so Greene tweeted “the next episode” in reference to another Dre. song after the whole thing went down.