Do you really have to hand it to Marjorie Taylor Greene?
The country has come to know the representative from Georgia as a political pit bull who’s willing to sink her teeth into the sundry MAGA conspiracy theories that have helped President Trump take over the Republican Party and the country as a whole. But in recent weeks she’s undergone something of a rehabilitation — blaming Republicans for a government shutdown and advocating the release of the Epstein files — and bucked her party’s leadership in the process.
Some people are quick to give her credit, arguing that her about-face on Trump is a sign she’s truly seen the light, awakening from her Trumpian fugue state. They’re missing the point. We aren’t watching a political renaissance or a feel-good story about deprogramming the MAGA faithful. We are watching a middle-aged career woman time the market on her political and professional ambitions. She has recognized, perhaps rightly, that there is no place for women like her in Trump’s halls of power. So she’s building herself an escape route.
On Friday Greene announced that she will be leaving Congress in January. She is not going quietly. A statement justifying her decision is four pages long. Her call-out of politicians from both sides of the aisle as a weak, cowardly and exploitative “political industrial complex” has a nice ring to it. But it’s all downhill from there.
She doubles down on some of the most vile, unhinged dog whistles and conspiracy theories in American politics. She blames “illegal labor” for Americans’ economic woes, defends her anti-abortion record and even works in a dig against Covid-19 vaccines. It is a rant chock-full of the same conspiracy-minded unpopular populism that Greene has been about her entire political career. Perhaps that’s because she was a true believer in the incoherent ideology that propelled Trump back to power, or because she, like so many other women, looked at Trump and saw an opportunity for her own self-interest.
As surprising as it may seem, Trump blew into political power by charming women. He does not cut an attractive figure: His social manners are boorish if they are present at all; he puts ketchup on his well-done steak; he is weird with his own daughter and even weirder around other people’s daughters; he is funny only if you are kind of mean or a total suck-up. Some women find that revolting.
But for the women of the right, women with ambitions, Trump’s disregard for decorum looked like a professional opportunity. Sure, he might joke about sexually assaulting women. But a rule breaker might break some rules for you. If you feel underemployed, underappreciated and under-capitalized, you don’t have a lot to lose by betting on the crude guy with the bad jokes. That’s how I think of the women who built the Trump political brand: Ideology did not matter to them in the end, because what did matter was that Trump gave them a way to shine.
Some of the most visible Trump groupies are members of government: Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace, Elise Stefanik, Kristi Noem and, of course, Marjorie Taylor Greene. These women brought a certain amount of chutzpah to Trump’s brand, adding their feminine touch to his masculine politics of disruption, grift and sexism so that it looked less like scamminess and more like populism. In exchange, they rode Trump’s ideological coattails to power.
This kind of professional coverture — where women rely on powerful men for their own professional status — can be heady. It’s not hard to imagine the onetime “South Dakota Snow Queen” Noem struggling with professional respect or the G.E.D. holder Boebert having few career options. And for many of them, betting on Trump did pay off. They did not just win elections and gain political appointments. They also became stars.
But history can tell you what happens when a king graces a woman with new powers: When the king tires of her, her reign is over.
Viewing Greene’s newfound political trajectory as bravery assumes that she had something to risk in standing up to Trump. But it is just as likely that, like millions of women before her, Greene’s status with the king had already been degraded. Trump once described Greene’s frequent phone calls with great affection. This month he described them as a nuisance and her as a lunatic. It’s a classic breakup drama.
It’s kind of a shame that Greene doesn’t seem to have found any value in feminism over her public career. Because what’s currently shaping her political fortunes can be explained rather simply by Feminism 101.
Trump’s White House is so circuslike, it’s easy to forget that it is also a workplace. And women of a certain age know what it means to get older at work. Trump’s own administration shows the two roads available. Susie Wiles, his chief of staff, is experienced, credentialed, and seems to be faring just fine in Trump’s sexist universe. She also is not courting public attention or trying to build a public brand as a political influencer. If you don’t have her gravitas, your ambition relies on favor. That’s where it gets sticky. The Trump ethos rewards gregarious, aspirational, younger women.
Trump governs much like he once ran his beauty pageants. Women decorate his atmosphere. They must not challenge him for leadership of it.
It wasn’t lost on me that the same month Greene announced her retirement and her president dismissed her as a lunatic, Zohran Mamdani, the next mayor of New York, visited the West Wing.
Whereas Greene has been restrained even in her disagreements with Trump, Mamdani is a self-described democratic socialist who has called out the president’s “fascist tactics.” Yet Trump showered Mamdani with praise. He glowed up at him beatifically, looking to all the world like a young girl in a Renaissance painting. When the news media pressed Mamdani on his past comments and heckled him about taking an airplane to Washington instead of a “greener” option, Trump stepped in to defend him. Vociferously, even.
Yes, there was a lot of hero worship at play. Mamdani is the coolest boy in the only school Trump has ever cared about — New York City. But Mamdani is also a man.
The man Greene was relying on for her political favor fawned over a socialist before he would protect his loyal female surrogate. Women helped make Trump. Trump never intended to repay the favor. Some women will figure that out sooner than others.
At the end of the day, fantasies of Greene’s political evolution are overblown. Her own words show that she has no remorse for the immense damage she has done to this nation, to its discourse, to its political legitimacy. Yes, she offered a mealy-mouthed apology for her role in our “toxic politics.” But on the whole she is, like many conservative women, a beneficiary of the very feminism that she reviles. She has long thought that being a tough girl rumbling alongside the boys will earn their loyalty, when all it ever does is earn women the right to throw themselves on the sword for men who never deserved their sacrifices.
To her credit, Greene is a survivor. She took a hard look at her political fortunes and appears to be betting on herself. As some reporting indicates others in the House are also looking to retire, she may end up being prescient. Or she may have mistimed the market on Trump’s political fortunes. Either way, she took the only choice she really had available to her.
There is not a real place for women in Trumpism, in MAGA or in the mainstream Republican Party, as long as they are one and the same. But Greene’s trajectory is a lesson fit for a fairy tale. If you want to control your own destiny, it’s better to be a wicked witch than a princess.
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