It has long been an article of faith that Donald Trump rules the GOP with an iron fist. There shall be no deviation from his word. Lest anyone stray from his path, the sinner can expect to be smote with a single Truth Social post and their political career destroyed with fire and brimstone. Trump’s rule by intimidation has allowed him to usurp the constitutional duties of Congress — and led congressional Republicans to a near-total abdication of their legislative prerogatives.
Trump has managed to destroy the careers of many Republicans he has deemed disloyal by endorsing primary opponents to run against them or making life so difficult that they simply leave politics altogether. And his followers have often taken his ire so much to heart that they routinely threaten violence against elected officials and their families if they cross the president. One need only review the footage from Jan. 6 and see his followers flooding the Capitol while chanting “hang Mike Pence” to be reminded of that fact.
For nearly a decade it’s been Trump or nothing in the Republican Party. But the president’s erratic behavior, obvious decline and growing unpopularity in his second term is starting to expose fault lines that are weakening his hold. He appears to be hitting lame duck status much earlier than expected, and MAGA is starting to eat its own.
The old GOP is long dead and MAGA is incoherent. Trump is impulsively indulging his every passing whim while his apparatchiks are following their own bliss and the party establishment is frozen in amber like a bunch of prehistoric insects.
The old GOP is long dead and MAGA is incoherent. Trump is impulsively indulging his every passing whim while his apparatchiks are following their own bliss and the party establishment is frozen in amber like a bunch of prehistoric insects.
But there is one person who seems to believe that MAGA is an actual movement with an actual ideology. And she is someone whose entire political career and persona were formed when she became a passionate follower of Donald Trump on Facebook: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
Even before she was in Congress, Greene showed a talent for getting attention, such as the time she traveled to Washington, D.C., and live streamed herself confronting Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg, who was then a teenager, and harassing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., by telling her to “get rid of your diaper.” When Greene took office in 2021, she immediately became the most obnoxious member of Congress, accomplishing the rare bipartisan feat of persuading 11 GOP members to vote with Democrats to strip her of her committee assignments due to her violent comments. She became a ubiquitous TV presence and a staunch Trump defender. In a word, she became infamous.
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Greene is literally the last person anyone would have expected to break with Donald Trump — but that’s what she has done. Her first move was to support the release of the Epstein files against the president’s will. That rebellion would have been shocking enough, but since the case had been a cause célèbre among the MAGA faithful, it made some sense. However, she’s since gone much further, condemning Trump’s support for Israel, showing support for Gaza and criticizing his decision, however reluctantly it was made, to support Ukraine. But most surprising of all is her call to extend Obamacare subsidies and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, citing the needs of the working families, both of which were a red line for Trump and the GOP establishment.
Then there is the radical change in Greene’s tone. She’s been all over mainstream TV of late, apologizing for being a toxic terror and claiming she was misled into believing all those QAnon conspiracies. Coming from the second rudest, most confrontational politician in America, that turnabout is really something. Trump has exiled her, of course, saying she’s lost her mind and referring to her as “Marjorie Traitor Greene,” which seems to have really hurt her feelings. In her new, softer voice, she retorted, “Let me tell you what a traitor is. A traitor is an American that serves foreign countries and themselves.”
What’s Greene up to? It’s bizarre to say the least. There’s a ton of speculation that she’s mad because Trump told her she couldn’t win a Senate race, and so she’s decided to position herself for a presidential run. Time will tell. But whatever she has in mind, she is following what she believes to be true MAGA ideology.
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Greene believes in America First, which means isolationism and withdrawal from international commitments and foreign aid. She believes that America should close its borders to foreigners and rid itself of those who are here. And she believes in Trumpian economic populism, which says you can lower taxes and pay for generous benefits simply by doing all those things. But she’s discarding MAGA’s most fundamental tenet: Loyalty to Donald Trump.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is a 51-year-old woman who never gave much thought to politics until she was 45. She is not a product of the modern conservative movement or even of Rush Limbaugh talk radio propaganda. She is pure MAGA; the only political ideology she knows is a shallow amalgam of half-baked bromides that Trump has been spouting since he came down that escalator 10 years ago, most of which he himself doesn’t believe in or care about.
But Greene is highly ambitious. She’s a cunning, natural politician with an ego almost as big as Trump’s, and she sees that he is not going to be around much longer. Will she be able to survive Trump’s assault and come out the other side with a coherent MAGA ideology that will capture the hearts of the faithful once he’s gone? At the moment she seems to be the only one who’s trying.
