- The polemical politician is leaving Congress on January 5 after her disagreements with Donald Trump and congressional Republicans escalated over the Epstein recordsdata final 12 months.
- However earlier than then, Greene voiced a whole lot of misgivings about Trump, the GOP, and the way forward for the MAGA motion, which she revisited in interviews for a New York Occasions Journal article revealed final week.
- Greene outlined the methods she thinks Republicans below Trump have did not ship on the MAGA guarantees they made to voters final 12 months, squandering the united management Republicans have of presidency and betraying key MAGA ideas.
Right now, the controversial congressional profession of Marjorie Taylor Greene comes to finish — not less than for the foreseeable future.
However earlier than her exit, she acquired a number of extra jabs in at President Donald Trump. First, in a wide-ranging New York Occasions Journal profile final week, the retiring Georgia consultant reignited her feud with the president, admitting to being “simply so naïve” about Washington politics since being sworn in and lamenting the wasted potential of the MAGA motion by a do-nothing Congress.
“How did all of this find yourself to some extent,” she complained to the Occasions’s Robert Draper about her celebration’s dealing with of the Epstein recordsdata, “the place it was about releasing recordsdata about ladies who had been raped, and never the intense issues that I feel actually matter about serving to to get our economic system stabilized once more? Assist cut back the price of residing, repair the housing market, repair medical health insurance — for the love of God, what the [expletive] is the matter with these individuals?”
Then, following the information from Caracas, she posted the next (prolonged) denunciation on X:
Because the weekend progressed, the outgoing member of Congress stored up her critiques, saying in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press that Trump is forgetting what “America First” means, and is betraying the guarantees he made voters: “That was a part of what [Americans] voted for in 2024, they voted to tear down the system that protects the wealthy, highly effective elites; they voted to tear down the system that persistently goes for overseas wars and regime change.”
Greene is leaving Congress on account of her high-profile cut up with Trump — he promised to help a major problem in 2026 after she began criticizing him — so it is smart to take what she’s saying now with a spoonful of salt.
However in dishing on her considering during the last 12 months, she additionally revealed some insightful dynamics about what she thinks is going on to Trump’s motion.
Whereas she believed that “Making America Nice Once more” was a set of ideas and beliefs — “America First, Safe Borders, No Pointless Wars, Finish Globalization, and Shield Free Speech” — for Trump and the GOP, that’s principally simply doing no matter Trump needs; doing little of what they promised; or, even worse, doing the alternative.
It’s a theme that she’s talked about not simply on this journal story, but additionally in interviews and public feedback she’s given over the previous couple of months: that when MAGA voters lastly delivered Republicans unified management of the federal authorities, the celebration wasted that point and fumbled what little they did decide up.
From overseas coverage to affordability to, lastly, the Epstein recordsdata, 2025 seems, to her, to have been MAGA’s misplaced 12 months.
MTG thinks her colleagues are proud of doing nothing
For the previous couple of months, Greene has been fairly clear that she doesn’t assume the vast majority of her colleagues in Congress are precise MAGA believers. She’s bemoaned how simply Trump critics or saboteurs have laundered their reputations, landed within the White Home, or made it into his interior circle. And he or she’s claimed that the majority elected Republicans would somewhat not do something in any respect than implement a actual MAGA agenda.
“The Republicans that I work with…take a look at [Trump] like a pace bump. Lots of them can’t wait to get him out of the best way,” she informed Tucker Carlson on his podcast in October. “So many instances for our celebration…they get on board they usually marketing campaign they usually say ‘America First’ they usually attempt to utter and mimic these Donald Trump speaking factors. However when it truly involves attending to work and delivering these speaking factors into motion for the American individuals…what are we doing? We’re sitting at dwelling.”
The October to mid-November authorities shutdown, particularly, appears to have turned her most in opposition to her celebration.
“I actually haven’t any respect for the Home not being in session. And I’ve no respect for Speaker Johnson not calling us again to Washington as a result of we needs to be passing payments…that replicate the president’s govt orders, that are precisely what we voted for,” she informed Carlson. “We needs to be at work on our committees. We needs to be doing investigations…We needs to be passing the discharge petition that Thomas Massie put in to launch the Epstein recordsdata…[and] we needs to be passing our appropriation payments to really fund the federal government and fund necessary tasks.”
She expanded on this concept of Republicans squandering their energy in appearances on cable information, together with when she praised Nancy Pelosi’s “potential to get issues finished” as speaker on CNN after Pelosi introduced her retirement. “I want we might get issues finished for our celebration like Nancy Pelosi was in a position to ship for her celebration.”
And he or she revisited it in her interviews with the Occasions: the sensation that neither she, nor the Home, had any actual say in implementing an agenda as a result of Speaker Mike Johnson and GOP management would solely enable Congress to behave as an extension of the White Home.
“I would like you to know that Johnson is just not our speaker,” she informed the Occasions in December. The speaker “is actually one hundred pc below direct orders from the White Home. And lots of, many Republicans are so livid about that, however they’re cowards.”
As a substitute, when Congress and Trump did get to work, they betrayed MAGA
Paired up with the sense that Congress simply wasted a 12 months of unified management of presidency is Greene’s cost that when Republicans did act, they actually solely ended up betraying MAGA values and voters.
She describes her final 12 months as one spent as a referee or father or mother: “What have I been doing since he grew to become president? I’ve labored very arduous to maintain everyone contained in the guardrails of what we campaigned on: ‘No, this is what we mentioned. This is what we promised. Now we have now to ship. And never by way of govt orders or red-meat rants on social media,’” she informed the Occasions. “And I at all times return to the those who confirmed up at his rallies, as a result of these are the individuals that ought to matter. These individuals ought to matter over these massive crypto donors or the AI big-tech individuals.”
What do these guardrails appear like? She’s specified these pink strains over the previous couple of weeks, and the way she thinks Trump and congressional Republicans have crossed them:
As a substitute of disentangling America from overseas wars, the administration infiltrated Venezuela and captured its chief, Nicolás Maduro, launched airstrikes in opposition to the Houthis in Yemen, bombed Iran, and continues to prop up Ukraine in opposition to Russia. As a substitute of slicing overseas help, the US despatched billions extra to Israel, Egypt, Ukraine, and bailed out Argentina.
“I don’t understand how that’s America First,” she informed Carlson about that final one. “However what we have now happening proper now, I imply, severely, take a look at it. It’s a revolving door on the White Home, a revolving door of overseas leaders and prime ministers and presidents all with their arms out demanding cash and demanding consideration and demanding America do that.”
She had the same critique of the president’s army actions in Venezuela, telling NBC’s Kristen Welker on Sunday that Trump “campaigned on Make America Nice Once more, that we thought was placing America first…‘America First’ truly means ‘for the American individuals.’ … They voted for this administration, and their small-dollar donation ought to matter. And MAGA has its personal enemy checklist. And the enemies of the world usually are not on their enemy checklist, they usually’re uninterested in being ignored.”
As a substitute of constructing life extra inexpensive for People, Trump doubled down on tariffs, allowed Obamacare subsidies to run out, and referred to as affordability considerations a Democratic “con job,” — all betrayals of MAGA voters, Greene argues.
In the meantime, Trump was joyful to implement cryptocurrency and AI insurance policies that had been pleasant to billionaire donors and supporters, whereas permitting for extra overseas scholar visas and obstructing the discharge of the Epstein recordsdata.
To make certain, there are in all probability different deeper private and strategic causes for Greene’s break with Trump and retirement from politics for now. It’s in all probability not a coincidence that that is occurring as Trump’s approval scores sink to their lowest ranges of his second time period, after Republicans confronted off-year election losses and look prone to lose extra subsequent 12 months, and as Trump’s MAGA coalition — on the elite and on the common degree — appears to fracture and decide sides over the way forward for the GOP.
However for all of the fanfare of a 12 months dominated by Trump and his motion, Greene’s reflections recommend that not less than for considered one of its true believers, MAGA wasn’t as profitable because it got down to be in its first 12 months in workplace. And on prime of that, she’s suggesting that there are voters who will care about this, are paying consideration, and may not be forgiving in 2026 and past. It’s a clarion name for a motion she thought-about herself a founding member of, and one she thinks has been led astray.
