Marjorie Taylor Greene Knows Exactly What She’s Doing

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R
epresentative Marjorie Taylor Greene has been bucking the Republican party line with increasing frequency—standing with Democrats to demand that the Justice Department release the Epstein files, decrying the spike in health-care premiums, and holding love-ins with the hosts of
The View
. Many people are trying to get their heads around the fact that the “
Jewish space lasers
” lady is now a leading voice of heterodoxy and, at least intermittently, common sense.
The prevailing theory for this bout of independence is that Greene is angry at President Donald Trump for foiling her plans to run for Senate. “Here’s some tea for you,”
explained
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a longtime Greene antagonist, on social media this week: “The White House and Trumpland shut down Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal ambitions to run for Senate, and she has been on a revenge tour ever since.” The journalist Tara Palmeri suggested in her newsletter, “As much as I’d like to believe Greene’s recent critiques are born of sudden enlightenment—that it was just fearing that her adult sons will have to pay higher Obamacare premiums that changed her mind on health care or that she’s suddenly opposed to mass deportations—the simpler, messier truth is often personal.”
[
From the January/February 2023 issue: Why is Marjorie Taylor Greene like this?
]
Having initially judged Greene to be a wildly uninformed conspiracy theorist, I was similarly predisposed to dismiss her evolution as a kind of revenge for being slighted. But having listened closely to her commentary of late, I’ve concluded that she is up to something more interesting and strategic. Greene seems to have recognized that the president has broken faith with his own followers. That realization may also now be dawning on other Republicans after Tuesday’s electoral mini-rout, but Greene not only saw it happening sooner; she began planning her future around it. She may be planning for a day when the MAGA movement is not led by Trump, or even by a member of his administration, but by a leader who can speak on behalf of its disgruntled base. Somebody like her.
When Greene announced in May that she wouldn’t seek her party’s nomination for Senate in Georgia next year, she insisted that Trump had not pressured her to stay out of the race. But Greene’s rebellion against him began around the same time. It takes a lot for Trump to disqualify a loyal candidate, but Greene’s history of conspiratorial claims—such as that 9/11 was an inside job, and that the Parkland and Sandy Hook shootings were staged—yielded polls that had her
reportedly
trailing incumbent Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff by double digits. Although Greene may have been diverted from her path to the Senate, she seems to have found an even bigger opportunity.
Her first major break with the administration came on the Epstein files. Right-wing activists devoted years to building up Jeffrey Epstein as not only a deviant and a monster but the beating heart of a nexus of dark power. It was odd, then, for Trump to suddenly declare the entire issue too boring even to merit discussion, let alone a full public disclosure.
Most of Trump’s supporters eventually, if reluctantly, came around to his position. After initially demanding more information, Charlie Kirk announced in July, “Honestly, I’m done talking about Epstein for the time being. I’m going to trust my friends in the administration. I’m going to trust my friends in the government to do what needs to be done.” Greene seemed to recognize that “trust my friends in the government” was not the most satisfying resolution to the saga that had gripped MAGA devotees, so she pounded the table for the files to come out.
Greene has also positioned herself as a vocal critic of Israel who has been willing to flirt with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. She has voted to
cut
aid to Israel, including missile defense, and to
protect
the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement from a ban backed by fellow Republicans. She also praises right-wing influencers such as Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, who have alienated much of the party establishment with their support for anti-Semitic ideas.
Greene’s stances on these issues may be motivated by bigotry, but her views are consistent: She denounces most foreign aid, including to Israel, Ukraine, and Argentina, which is getting
a $40 billion bailout
from Trump. She has noticed that the party’s base remains attached to “America First” nationalism, some of which is inflected with anti-Semitism. Trump stoked these sentiments and rode them to victory, but in office has straddled the divide between MAGA ideals and standard conservative policy goals, such as lower taxes for the rich and a muscular foreign policy.
[
Will Gottsegen: What’s going on with Marjorie Taylor Greene?
]
The representative’s most surprising act of deviation has come on health care. Democrats shut down the government to force Republicans to extend subsidies, without which
premiums for health insurance
bought through the Affordable Care Act marketplace will spike for millions of people. Republicans, still gripped by a dogmatic opposition to universal health care, have adamantly refused. Greene, however, has identified herself with the cause of constituents whose health insurance is suddenly unaffordable. “I’m absolutely disgusted that health insurance premiums will DOUBLE if the tax credits expire this year,” she
wrote on X
in early October, but swiftly added, “Also, I think health insurance and all insurance is a scam, just be clear!” (Greene’s views on the value of modern medicine are, well,
idiosyncratic
.)
Greene is essentially doing to Trump what Trump did to the Republican Party of George W. Bush: She is recognizing the gaping void between the values of the party’s leaders and those of its followers, and ruthlessly exploiting it.
When Trump ran for president a decade ago, he grasped that, although conservative voters loyally followed the party’s culture wars, they had little interest in the priorities of their leaders, such as a hawkish foreign policy and deep cuts to social welfare. When Trump denounced the Iraq War and curbs on Medicare and Social Security, his Republican rivals tried to paint him as a crypto-Democrat. Those attacks bounced off Trump, because the everyday needs of most Republican voters had diverged from the ideals of the party.
Greene seems to have stumbled onto the insight that Trump, despite his almost-theological hold on the base, has nonetheless betrayed it. Republican voters may not say they oppose aspects of Trump’s agenda, or even admit it to themselves. But Trump has used their loyalty to advance a series of causes—a regressive tax cut, slashes to Medicaid and food stamps, a bailout for Argentina—that his voters, at best, are willing to abide or, at worst, quietly resent.
Greene’s most shocking apostasy is her almost casual admission that Trump has not ended inflation and revived prosperity, as he routinely claims. “Prices have not come down at all,” she told the podcaster Tim Dillon in October. “The job market is still extremely difficult. Wages have not gone up. Health-insurance premiums are going to go up. Car insurance goes up every year.”
Those observations may sound heretical at a time when Trump continues to insist that America is at the dawn of a new Golden Age. But they reflect public sentiment, which is the reason that Trump’s approval ratings have sagged, and that Democrats were able to run successfully everywhere on affordability in this week’s elections.
Imagine a Republican presidential primary three years from now. If the economy is booming, the party’s voters will probably crave the continuity promised by J. D. Vance. If inflation remains stubbornly high and the job market is still soft, or if the economy has plunged into outright recession, then matters will look different. The aperture will widen for a new populist MAGA leader who will carry out the promises Trump failed to fulfill. Greene appears to be making a bet on inheriting control of MAGA after a failed Trump presidency.
Greene has
reportedly confided
in colleagues that she has designs on the top office, apparently firm in the belief that she is “real MAGA and that the others have strayed.” Yet when Dillon asked whether she wished to run for president in 2028, Greene demurred. “Do I know what that means two years down the road or four years down the road?” she mused. “I don’t know what that means.”
Perhaps she doesn’t. But for a politician who may or may not know what she is doing, Greene is positioning herself for a future that, not long ago, would have appeared as absurd as a Trump presidency once did.