Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has become an unlikely critic of the Republican leadership.
Elected to office in 2020, Greene has become one of the most controversial figures in American politics, leaving a trail of racist and antisemitic statements and unapologetically embracing conspiracy theories. But even as Greene has remained a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump’s agenda, she has shown a greater willingness in the past few months to break with her party on issues like Israel’s war in Gaza; the release of the Epstein files; and now, the fight to end the government shutdown.
It’s an apparent shift that has left many political observers scratching their heads. But Tia Mitchell, the Washington bureau chief of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and co-host of their Politically Georgia podcast, says if you’ve been following Marjorie Taylor Greene for as long as she has, all of this makes sense.
Below is an excerpt of Mitchell’s conversation with Today, Explained host Noel King. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Let’s talk about what Marjorie Taylor Greene has been up to recently. She has become one of the most interesting voices in the fight over the shutdown. Is this surprising to you?
No, it’s not surprising to me, because to understand Marjorie Taylor Green, you have to understand that she comes from hard-right MAGA. She does not identify as QAnon anymore; she denounced it early in her career. She comes from that Christian nationalist ultraconservative movement. She believes that trans people really shouldn’t exist. She does not believe abortion should exist.
But on a lot of populist things — the Epstein files, the consistency with wanting to not fund a war that is ravaging Gaza — for Marjorie Taylor Greene, she is someone who says, “y values have always been my values. I’ve never wavered, and if that means sometimes I have to disagree with President Trump then so be it, because I am not wavering from where I stood all along.”
Let’s talk about the shutdown and what she’s been saying there. What is her main point of divergence with much of the rest of the Republican Party?
Her criticism has been the issue Democrats raised: that if the [Obamacare] subsidies are allowed to expire, many people’s insurance — and we’re talking about millions of people — their insurance will go up in ways that they will find it hard to afford coverage.
And she says that Republicans, instead of engaging with this real issue, are just kind of saying, “Oh, that’s just Democrats belly-aching, that’s just Democrats trying to keep the government shut down.” She wasn’t necessarily saying, “Do what the Democrats want.” She wasn’t even necessarily saying, “I think the Democrats are right on their fix.” She’s saying the Democrats are right in talking about it. Why aren’t we Republicans also talking about it? Why don’t we Republicans have an answer for the people who say, “Well, what are you gonna do about the cost of health coverage?”
You know, we have been covering the fact that many people who get these Affordable Care Act subsidies, they live in red states. They are people who voted for President Trump. How do her constituents in Georgia feel about the way in which she’s standing up for them, even if it puts her at odds with the president?
I mean, they’ve always stood beside her. Her constituents in her district would say, “Well, I like that. She’s not afraid to speak her mind. Yeah, I might not agree with everything she says. Sometimes I think she goes too far, but at the end of the day, she’s fighting for us.”
And so now, she has evolved. She’s in her third term now; she’s learning how to play the game. She’s learning that, sometimes, you do have to vote for bills you don’t like for the greater good or to get something good in the bill, even if you don’t like other things in the bill that you think are bad.
And she is learning how to work with her coworkers and her colleagues in Congress. She’s toned down some of her more controversial rhetoric. She’s apologized when people have accused her of antisemitism, for example.
It is hard to see in our present day how she would live down something like Jewish space lasers, for example. You are talking about her moderating, and I wonder, is she moderating because she understands that politically she needs to moderate to survive, or is Marjorie Taylor Greene actually changing?
I don’t know if moderating is the right word. She’s still very conservative. She’s still hard right. But I think she has moderated, if the word is to be used, in her approach.
What’s different and what I think looks like moderation. But it’s not really moderation, it’s just a lot of Republican leaders’ shift to align with Donald Trump in ways that don’t fall in a clear box of conservative or moderate. They just fall in the box of, “Did you do what Donald Trump wanted you to do? Did you say what Donald Trump wanted you to say?” And so she doesn’t shift in that way. Sometimes it looks like she’s falling outside of that box. But really, it’s the box that’s shifting, not her. She says, “I’ve still remained aligned with President Trump. I’m a big champion of his. I’m loyal to him. It’s just I choose to disagree at times.” But the more you understand her and where she comes from, the less those disagreements will surprise you.
There’s something you’re nodding to here, which is that MAGA and Donald Trump used to be synonymous. Marjorie Taylor Greene is one of those interesting flashpoints that proves that in October of 2025, MAGA and Donald Trump are not synonymous anymore.
Or you could say MAGA means different things to different people, because I think some people would say to be MAGA means aligned with Donald Trump. And so we’ve seen people like Laura Loomer and Marjorie Taylor Greene openly disagree about which direction to take.
Quite frankly, before his death, Charlie Kirk was involved in some of those internal spats among Republicans about what it truly means to be MAGA and where that aligns with President Trump. It’s fascinating to watch, and it’s gonna be fascinating particularly if and when Donald Trump decides to get out of active politics. Because right now, he’s the glue that holds it together, even loosely.
It is interesting to see how Democrats — some Democrats, maybe not even elected Democrats — but people who vote Democrat have embraced Marjorie Taylor Greene.
They really like the way she’s talking about health care and the way she won’t let up. Does she want that? Does she want support from the other side?
I think she likes the fact that people are starting to listen to her, and some of that is just, she came in hot, and controversial, and leaning into that. And that gave her a brand of being someone that people on the left just didn’t want to hear from, and so, they didn’t listen to her, they didn’t engage with her. And so, what we’re hearing from some Democrats are like, “Wow, I spent five minutes listening to Marjorie Taylor Greene, and by darn it, she makes sense. I can’t believe I find myself agreeing with some of the things she’s saying.”
I think, for her, she is gratified by the fact that when people listen to her, they shed the assumption that she’s just a crazy QAnon lady who has nothing intelligent to say. Now does she wanna be a Democrat? Absolutely not.
Not too long ago, we gave our elected officials more flexibility to, like — it doesn’t have to be “either you’re with us or you’re against us” at all times; we thought our elected officials should find places where they had common ground, and when there was common ground, you worked together. You didn’t just say, “Well, I can’t cross the aisle, because those people are our enemy.”
I think that’s the other thing for some Democrats and people watching Marjorie Taylor Greene: It’s challenging thinking that, oh yeah, Marjorie Taylor Greene is all of these things, but can I still agree with her sometimes? Can I still hear her out and find common ground? And what does that say about what I think in my politics? She doesn’t have to be all bad, I guess, is what some people are realizing. And maybe if they realize that about Marjorie Taylor Greene, they’ll realize that about other people in politics, and I just think that’s a hard place in our political climate for people to reckon with.
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