A rupture has occurred in the space-farce political continuum. MAGA majorette Marjorie Taylor Greene is now a MAGA castoff. She came into Congress like a lion and is leaving like lamb kabob, well-done. After a dramatic breakup with President Donald Trump in the past week-plus, MTG announced that she would resign from Congress in January instead of seeking reelection next year as she had intended.
You know of whom I speak: The turbulent Republican representative of Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. For the edification of the few who may not know her history, here are three useful paragraphs from the Wikipedia entry on her:
Greene has promoted Islamophobic, antisemitic, and white supremacist views including the white genocide conspiracy theory, as well as QAnon, and Pizzagate. She has amplified conspiracy theories that allege government involvement in mass shootings in the United States, implicate the Clinton family in murder, and suggest the attacks of 9/11 were a hoax. Before running for Congress, Greene supported calls to execute prominent Democratic Party politicians, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. As a congresswoman, she equated the Democratic Party with Nazis, and compared COVID-19 safety measures to the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust, later apologizing for this comparison. During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Greene promoted Russian propaganda and praised its president Vladimir Putin. Greene identifies as a Christian nationalist.
A vocal advocate of President Donald Trump during his first presidency, Greene aided and supported Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election and has promoted Trump’s false claims of a stolen election. She called for the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election in Georgia to be decertified, and was part of a group of Republican legislators who unsuccessfully challenged votes for Joe Biden during the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count, even though federal agencies and courts overseeing the election found no evidence of electoral fraud. Days after Biden’s inauguration, Greene filed articles of impeachment alleging abuse of power.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted to remove Greene from all committee roles on February 4, 2021, in response to her endorsements of political violence. Eleven Republicans joined unanimous Democrats in the vote. Greene was appointed to new committee roles in January 2023. In June 2023, Greene was expelled from the conservative House Freedom Caucus after insulting fellow caucus member Congresswoman Lauren Boebert. Greene unsuccessfully attempted to oust Mike Johnson from his role as Speaker of the House of Representatives on May 8, 2024.
In 2021 when Greene was stripped of her House committee assignments over her endorsement of political violence, she delivered a peculiar pseudo-apology on the House floor in which she made this remarkable assertion: “I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true.”
Who but she herself could have “allowed” her to believe the appalling ideas to which she gave voice or otherwise endorsed? How could she not have known better? She was, after all, a grown woman, and a mother at that. That attempt at evasion of responsibility for personal conduct has been typical of verbal bomb throwers at both ends of our political spectrum. But in the case of Greene, the behavior was so extreme as to suggest some sort of unwellness.
For much of her time in Congress, Greene was a determined climber of the slippery political pole. When Republican Kevin McCarthy of California was House speaker, she attached herself to him like a limpet. And she was an embarrassingly frequent presence at the side of Donald Trump at his various properties during his first term and in the interregnum. She was all in on the MAGA crazy. And in the House, she was an aggressive warrior for the cause of the unhinged far right.
Greene constantly sought attention by acting up in public, even heckling President Joe Biden during his State of the Union speech to Congress in March 2024, shouting a demand that he say the name of Laken Riley, a 22-year-old university student in Georgia who, while out on a run in broad daylight in February 2024, was ambushed and murdered by a Venezuelan man who was illegally in the U.S. (That man has been sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole.)
Greene also became a bully to the most liberal female members of the House, and in one notorious confrontation with Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, the Georgian came out epically on the short end.
Greene, who had by then been returned to service on House committees, took a personal dig at Crockett during a hearing of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee in May 2024. “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading,” Greene sniped.
According to The Hill, this happened subsequently:
Later in the hearing, Crockett asked what she described as a hypothetical question about what might violate congressional protocol.
“I’m just curious, just to better understand your ruling,” Crockett said, referring to a decision made by Chair James Comer (R-Ky.).
“If someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach blonde bad built butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?” Crockett said, in a veiled barb aimed at Greene.
Crockett’s “clapback” immediately entered the realm of political legend.
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Once Kevin McCarthy had been driven from the House speakership for the unforgivable crime of making legislative deals with the enemy — that is, President Biden and House Democrats — Greene seemed to be somewhat adrift, like a limpet whose fierce grip on a piling has been broken, with the unhappy gastropod cast into the waves beating against the dock.
By degrees during Donald Trump’s second term as president, Greene has appeared to lose her MAGA fealty. But it was in relation to the Jeffrey Epstein sex-crimes scandal that she most clearly broke with Trump. She was one of just four House Republicans who put their names on a discharge petition to force a floor vote on a demand that the Department of Justice release all of the files in its possession concerning the late Jeffrey Epstein. The idea was to reveal the names of powerful people who had made nice with Epstein the sex trafficker. Trump had long opposed and attacked the “Epstein hoax.” He had been close with Epstein, and speculation that the files might implicate him in dreadful acts has been rife.
As the push for a House vote on the Epstein records came to a head in the past two weeks, Greene criticized Trump for resisting the release of the records and as neglecting his domestic agenda to focus on matters abroad.
Trump reversed himself on the Epstein files, suddenly urging Republicans in Congress to vote to release the records. (Events may yet prove, though, that his about-face is part of another, more elaborate, effort to conceal the records.) But soon after his reversal on the Epstein vote, Trump also announced that he was withdrawing his support from Greene and attacked her in the personal way to which his targets are accustomed. She then announced that she would leave Congress.
When Greene departs from Congress in January, we may not have heard the last of her politically. It is not for nothing that cynics say that formaldehyde is the only cure for the strain of Potomac River fever that infects politicians who come to serve in Washington.
Greene says that Trump’s latest treatment of her is intended to cow the rest of the Republican conference in Congress. Well, yes. But Trump is a bully, so he has always succeeded by abusing and cowing others. The real lesson in this latest rupture between him and one of his former sycophants is a repeat lesson: Trump is faithless and is never to be trusted. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of all people, should have known better, since she and he are two peas in a pod.
Democracy Warrior 