When Jack Abramoff dominated Washington lobbying in the 1990s and early 2000s, he observed that there were two kinds of people in town: those who “get the joke” and those who don’t.
Those who got the joke understood that all the city’s talk of ideas and principles was flimflam to conceal self-enrichment at the public’s expense. Those who didn’t—didn’t.
On the same day that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned, The New York Times reported accusations that President Donald Trump’s handpicked director of the Kennedy Center, Richard Grenell, had used the fine-arts institution’s $268 million budget to dole out favors and enrich friends and allies. If the claims—which Grenell disputes—are correct, Abramoff would recognize a fine example of “getting the joke.”
Greene did not get the joke. Elected to Congress in Georgia in 2020, she became one of the loudest voices in American life for crackpot conspiracy claims: Pizzagate, QAnon, 9/11 Trutherism, and a fantasy that California wildfires might have been caused by space lasers controlled by Jewish bankers. She repeated 2020 election denialism and promoted Vladimir Putin’s propaganda about his war on Ukraine.
For a long time, Greene’s seemingly fathomless gullibility qualified her as a MAGA leader in Congress. But the gullibility actually did have a limit. Sometime after her election, she began to realize that she’d been made a fool of.
[Jonathan Chait: Marjorie Taylor Greene knows exactly what she’s doing]
Of all the ridiculous things Greene believed, perhaps the single most ridiculous was that Trump, of all people on earth, was leading a heroic fight against a global network of pedophiles.
Trump has a long and ample record on the sexual abuse of vulnerable people by powerful men. He’s for it. “When you’re a star, they let you do it,” as he explained. He has been accused of sexual assault by about two dozen women. One of them won a multimillion-dollar defamation verdict against him after he called her a liar. He boasted to a radio interviewer about intentionally walking into the changing room of a teen beauty pageant he sponsored. He fantasized aloud about dating his daughter. He maintained a close friendship for years with Jeffrey Epstein knowing full well that the financier liked girls “on the younger side,” as Trump told New York magazine in 2002. Even before Trump went into full cover-up mode on Epstein this year, you had to be thick as a pallet of bricks to imagine that Donald Trump would want justice for sex-abuse victims.
MAGA-world insiders got the joke. They knew that some of their supporters had convinced themselves that the Democratic Party was led by Satan-worshipping, child-sacrificing ritual cannibals. They also understand that any actual investigation of Epstein child abuse had to be shut down lest it implicate Epstein’s former friend and fellow accused sex offender, Donald Trump. MAGA insiders played games with the Epstein story, as J. D. Vance did in a tweet during the Biden years: “What possible interest would the US government have in keeping Epstein’s clients secret? Oh…” Vance was tickling the paranoia of the crazy fringe—without committing to any specific action that might be embarrassing to Epstein’s most intimate associates.
The double game was best symbolized by an incident in February 2025. Attorney General Pam Bondi invited 15 right-wing social-media influencers to the White House, where she distributed thick white binders labeled, The Epstein Files: Phase 1. The binders in fact contained no new material of significance. Even the influencers themselves carefully admitted their disappointment. But what could they do? The joke must go on.
But maintaining the joke became more difficult in the fall of 2025. Even as the FBI and Department of Justice reversed former promise of transparency on the Epstein issue, materials began to leak from the deceased financier’s estate: a birthday greeting to Epstein that bears Trump’s signature and features a cartoon image of a naked woman; email traffic from Epstein himself attesting to his close relationship with Trump—including one that described Trump spending hours alone with one of Epstein’s trafficked victims.
Doubts spread among the non-joke-getters. Doubts expressed themselves in murmurings, then open rebellion. Republican House members joined Democrats in supporting a discharge petition to urge release Epstein materials from the Justice Department and FBI.
Trump resisted for many weeks. He called the Epstein story a “hoax,” his go-to move for maximally damaging accusations. He endorsed primary challenges and other pressures against Republicans who persisted on the Epstein trail after Trump ordered them to stop. The speaker of the House, a close Trump ally, kept the chamber closed for weeks to give the president time to push Republican petition signatories to reverse themselves. In the end, it was Trump who reversed himself. He had to accept a vote to release Epstein materials and then look for more subtle ways to continue covering up whatever it is that Trump wants to conceal.
[Idrees Kahloon: The GOP is realizing that Trump won’t be around forever]
But somewhere along the way, Greene’s defection became more radical and permanent. On November 14, Trump posted on his social-media platform about his efforts to explain the joke to her:
It seemed to all begin when I sent her a Poll stating that she should not run for Senator, or Governor, she was at 12%, and didn’t have a chance (unless, of course, she had my Endorsement — which she wasn’t about to get!). She has told many people that she is upset that I don’t return her phone calls anymore, but with 219 Congressmen/women, 53 U.S. Senators, 24 Cabinet Members, almost 200 Countries, and an otherwise normal life to lead, I can’t take a ranting Lunatic’s call every day. I understand that wonderful, Conservative people are thinking about primarying Marjorie in her District of Georgia, that they too are fed up with her and her antics and, if the right person runs, they will have my Complete and Unyielding Support.
The joke still eluded Greene. Trump called her a “traitor” on camera and shrugged off the death threats she received. Efforts to recruit a primary challenger to her accelerated. As the split widened between Greene and Trump, the embattled congresswoman began to receive friendlier media attention: a respectful interview on CNN, a guest appearance on The View.
Gullible as Greene was about crackpot theories and her political associations, she seems to have been clear-eyed about her own direct personal interests. She was one of the most active and successful stock traders in Congress, in a number of cases betting for or against companies about which she likely had advance information. She timed her resignation to take effect two days after her congressional pension vested.She’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington only if the cinematic Mr. Smith had returned home to Montana hugely enriched by timely speculations on land holdings near the Boy Ranger camp he championed.
But she never did get the joke on the biggest joke in town, the joke that MAGA is about anything more than manipulation, exploitation, corruption, lust, and cruelty. She seems to have sincerely believed the lies that shrewder players merely mouthed. She gained her own millions without appreciating that her allies were scheming for billions. She balked at the self-abasement before every one of Trump’s whims that is indispensable to MAGA survival and success. Her failure on those scores is her one service to the country—because it helps other Americans, the joke’s ultimate victims, to better understand what is happening to them and why.
The post Marjorie Taylor Greene Came So Close to Getting the Joke appeared first on The Atlantic.
