Recent days have brought signs of something that might have been all but unimaginable just a few months ago: Could it be that President Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party is slipping?
One of the most startling indicators was the announcement Friday night by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) that she is resigning her House seat rather than allowing herself to be treated by Trump like what she called “a battered wife hoping it all goes away and gets better.”
For years, one of the most stalwart and high-profile of Trump’s hard-right backers, Greene has more recently broken with him. That included on issues such as health care and the government shutdown, as well as pressing for the release of Justice Department files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
For her apostasies, Greene has become a target of the president, who has repeatedly attacked her on his social media platform, calling her “a traitor” and “a ranting Lunatic” who has gone “Far Left.” Early Saturday, he wrote on social media that her decision to quit Congress was based on “PLUMMETING Poll Numbers, and not wanting to face a Primary Challenger with a strong Trump Endorsement.”
But while Greene is leaving Washington, she made it clear that she does not plan to vanish from politics.
Near the conclusion of her four-page statement announcing her decision to step down from Congress was this warning, written in Trump’s own run-on and creatively capitalized style: “When the common American people finally realize and understand that the Political Industrial Complex of both parties is ripping this country apart, that not one elected leader like me is able to stop Washington’s machine from gradually destroying our country, and instead the reality is that they, common Americans, The People, possess the real power over Washington, then I’ll be here by their side to rebuild it.”
All of this came days after what has thus far been the most dramatic collective act of rebellion by Trump’s foot soldiers on Capitol Hill: a near-unanimous vote by both chambers of the GOP-controlled Congress to force the Justice Department to make its files on Epstein public.
For weeks, the president had fiercely resisted the move, insisting the push to release the files was nothing more than a “Democrat hoax.”
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) fell in line, adjourning the House during the government shutdown in part in an apparent effort to avoid having to schedule a vote. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) was noncommittal, waiting to see whether the House would force his hand.
Only four House Republicans, including Greene, had been willing to oppose Trump publicly on his resistance to bringing the matter to a vote. Meanwhile, the MAGA base, with a drumbeat from its online influencers, had been agitating for the release of whatever the government has on Epstein.
But once the requisite majority of House members had signed a petition that would force the vote, rank-and-file Republicans faced a choice: Would they stand with Trump or the wishes of their constituents? Seeing the coming stampede, Trump abruptly changed course and said he would support releasing the files.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) had joined Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) to introduce the bill in July and then lead the signature-gathering exercise to force a vote. Massie said in an interview that his own party’s leadership in the House has ceded too much to Trump.
“Basically, Mike Johnson has handed the keys to the House of Representatives to the president, and we took the keys back this week,” Massie said. “They weren’t driving very well, and we were able. We didn’t crash the car. We got it right to the destination.”
But he noted that the Epstein controversy presented a unique set of political circumstances, one in which Trump was at odds with not only the majority in the country but with his MAGA supporters.
Indeed, Trump as a candidate had elevated the unresolved questions surrounding Epstein as an exemplar of how the elites operate — only to find himself accused of doing the same thing.
The president was once a friend of Epstein, who pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges of soliciting a minor for prostitution and served a 13-month jail sentence. But Trump said they had a falling out decades ago. Trump has insisted he knew nothing of the activities. Epstein was later arrested in July 2019 on charges of sexually trafficking girls. The financier was found dead by suicide in his prison cell the following month.
“Will we be able to do it again? I don’t know,” Massie said. “It won’t ever come together like this, where you have an issue that’s so defensible, and it’s bipartisan, and it’s something the president campaigned on.”
Still, the stirrings of possible rebellion in Trump’s party have come against a backdrop of setbacks, including a Democratic sweep of this month’s elections; Trump’s slumping poll numbers, including on issues such as crime and immigration, where he and the Republicans have enjoyed an advantage; and a growing perception among voters that he has not delivered on his central campaign promise of lowering the cost of living.
For Republicans trying to hold onto their majorities in both houses of Congress, all of those things suggest the makings of a rout in next year’s midterm elections.
But Democrats in Congress say their GOP colleagues have not yet reached a true breaking point with Trump.
“It’s way premature to declare that Trump’s lock on Republicans in Congress has been broken, and I know I’ve seen that narrative beginning,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) said in an interview.
Polarization and gerrymandering have left few congressional seats truly competitive between the parties. For the vast majority of Republican incumbents, survival “means winning a Republican primary, and Donald Trump’s endorsement still is make-or-break,” Van Hollen said.
What distinguishes some of the breakaway Republicans, including both Massie and Greene, is that they have built their own identities and constituencies separate from Trump.
Early in her career, Greene embraced the fringe theories of the QAnon movement, which were built on baseless claims that Trump was secretly battling a cabal of “deep state” actors who sexually trafficked children and worshiped Satan. She also helped spread tropes that California wildfires had been started by Jewish-operated space lasers, that school shootings were staged and that 9/11 was an inside job.
Greene has since disavowed those statements. And last weekend, she did something truly remarkable in the never-back-down, never-apologize ethos Trump has fostered in the GOP.
In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Greene lamented Trump was using words that “can radicalize people against me and put my life in danger.” Bash pointed out that Greene had never spoken out against that kind of rhetoric until it was turned on her.
“I think that’s fair criticism. And I would like to say humbly I’m sorry for taking part in the toxic politics. It’s very bad for our country,” Greene said. “I’ve been working on this a lot lately — to put down the knives in politics.”
If Greene is sincere in her conversion, that may turn out to be a lonely cause. Because, for the time being at least, the GOP is still Trump’s party.
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