No, actually, it was civic hygiene. It was what the GOP would have done itself if it retained a shred of integrity.

Kurtz continued: "But in fairness, didn't you say around that time that you'd been a follower of QAnon conspiracy theory and you had rethought this and you were no longer influenced by the group?" Greene seized the opportunity to refashion herself:

"Like a lot of people today, I had easily gotten sucked into some things I had seen on the internet. But that was dealt with quickly early on. I never campaigned on those things. That was not something I believed in. That's not what I ran for Congress on. So those are so far in the past."

The bad internet sucked her in and forced her to believe that the Parkland shooting and the Sandy Hook murders and the Las Vegas massacre were all false flag operations; that 9/11 was an inside job; that a California wildfire was caused by Jewish space lasers; and that Hillary Clinton had murdered a child in order to use her blood for a satanic ritual.

"So far in the past." She hasn't said those things since 2018! Except, wait, wasn't it just in February 2022 that Greene spoke at a conference sponsored by the white nationalist/fascist Nick Fuentes? That was also the month that she described the Jan. 6 defendants as political prisoners and denounced "Nancy Pelosi's gazpacho police." (Though, candidly, we owe her a debt of gratitude for that.) And if memory serves, in October 2022, she told a crowd that "Democrats want Republicans dead and they have already started the killings." And wasn't it in December 2022 — last month — that she told the New York Young Republican Club that if she and Steve Bannon had organized the January 6 insurrection, "We would have won. Not to mention, it would have been armed."

Greene's makeover didn't start this week. She's made stabs at resets before, even traveling to the Holocaust museum to introduce a few facts into the roiling stew of garbage between her ears. She denounced Nick Fuentes after Trump dined with him (but not Trump), and acknowledged that a plane really did hit the Pentagon on 9/11. She has sparred with Lauren Boebert, the pillow guy and Alex Jones' fans.

But this is not a case of a politician who misspeaks or commits a gaffe and must make amends. She has a disordered personality. As a grown adult, she chased a teenager who had survived the Parkland school shooting down the street, harassing and berating him. She is drawn to hatred as a moth to a flame. She is the poison that courses through the veins of parts of the right — the vicious, reality-challenged right. If she is to be normalized by the GOP, it is the party, not she, that is changed.

No sooner did McCarthy achieve election on Friday night than Greene rushed to his side. They posed for a grinning photo. It was his first act as speaker.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the "Beg to Differ" podcast.