Marjorie Taylor Greene’s retirement is a warning signal for MAGA

[ad_1] The polemical politician is leaving Congress on January 5 after her disagreements with Donald Trump and congressional Republicans escalated over the Epstein recordsdata final yr. However earlier than then, Greene voiced lots of misgivings about Trump, the GOP, and the way forward for the MAGA motion, which she revisited in interviews for a New York Instances Journal article revealed final week. Greene outlined the methods she thinks Republicans beneath Trump have did not ship on the MAGA guarantees they made to voters final yr, squandering the united management Republicans have of presidency and betraying key MAGA rules. As we speak, the controversial congressional profession of Marjorie Taylor Greene involves an finish — at the very least for the foreseeable future.

However earlier than her exit, she received just a few extra jabs in at President Donald Trump. First, in a wide-ranging New York Instances Journal profile last 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 a degree,” she complained to the Instances’s Robert Draper about her occasion’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 believe actually matter about serving to to get our economic system stabilized once more? Assist scale back the price of residing, repair the housing market, repair medical insurance — for the love of God, what the [expletive] is the matter with these folks?”

Then, following the news from Caracas , she posted the next (prolonged) denunciation on X:

Because the weekend progressed, the outgoing member of Congress saved 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 constantly goes for overseas wars and regime change.”

Greene is leaving Congress because of her high-profile cut up with Trump — he promised to assist a major problem in 2026 after she began criticizing him — so it is sensible to take what she’s saying now with a spoonful of salt.

However in dishing on her considering over the past yr, 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 rules and beliefs — “ America First, Secure Borders, No Pointless Wars, End Globalization, and Protect Free Speech ” — for Trump and the GOP, that’s principally simply doing no matter Trump desires; doing little of what they promised; or, even worse, doing the other.

It’s a theme that she’s talked about not simply on this journal story, but in addition 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 occasion wasted that point and fumbled what little they did choose up.

From overseas coverage to affordability to, lastly, the Epstein recordsdata, 2025 seems, to her, to have been MAGA’s misplaced yr.

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 nearly all 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 she or he’s claimed that the majority elected Republicans would relatively not do something in any respect than implement a actual MAGA agenda.

“The Republicans that I work with…have a look at [Trump] like a velocity bump. Lots of them can’t wait to get him out of the way in which,” she advised Tucker Carlson on his podcast in October . “So many occasions for our occasion…they get on board and so they marketing campaign and so they say ‘America First’ and so they 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 folks…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 occasion.

“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 advised 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 essential initiatives.”

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 accomplished” as speaker on CNN after Pelosi introduced her retirement. “I want we may get issues accomplished for our occasion like Nancy Pelosi was in a position to ship for her occasion.”

And she or he revisited it in her interviews with the Instances: 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 just isn't our speaker,” she advised the Instances in December. The speaker “is actually 100% beneath direct orders from the White Home. And plenty of, many Republicans are so livid about that, however they’re cowards.”

As an alternative, when Congress and Trump did get to work, they betrayed MAGA

Paired up with the sense that Congress simply wasted a yr 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 yr as one spent as a referee or mum or dad: “What have I been doing since he turned president? I’ve labored very exhausting 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've got to ship. And never by govt orders or red-meat rants on social media,’” she advised the Instances. “And I at all times return to the people who confirmed up at his rallies, as a result of these are the folks that ought to matter. These folks ought to matter over these large crypto donors or the AI big-tech folks.”

What do these guardrails appear to be? She’s specified these purple traces over the previous couple of weeks, and the way she thinks Trump and congressional Republicans have crossed them:

As an alternative 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 an alternative of chopping overseas help, the US despatched billions extra to Israel, Egypt, Ukraine, and bailed out Argentina.

“I don’t know the way that’s America First,” she advised Carlson about that final one. “However what we've got occurring proper now, I imply, critically, have 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 palms 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 folks.’ … They voted for this administration, and their small-dollar donation ought to matter. And MAGA has its personal enemy listing. And the enemies of the world aren't on their enemy listing, and so they’re bored with being ignored.”

As an alternative of constructing life extra reasonably priced for People, Trump doubled down on tariffs, allowed Obamacare subsidies to run out, and referred to as affordability issues a Democratic “ con job, ” — all betrayals of MAGA voters, Greene argues.

In the meantime, Trump was glad to implement cryptocurrency and AI insurance policies that had been pleasant to billionaire donors and supporters, whereas permitting for extra overseas pupil visas and obstructing the discharge of the Epstein recordsdata.

To make certain, there are most likely different deeper private and strategic causes for Greene’s break with Trump and retirement from politics for now. It's most likely 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 yr, and as Trump’s MAGA coalition — on the elite and on the popular level — appears to fracture and choose sides over the way forward for the GOP.

However for all of the fanfare of a yr dominated by Trump and his motion, Greene’s reflections counsel that at the very least for one among its true believers, MAGA wasn’t as profitable because it got down to be in its first yr 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.