What’s Going On With Marjorie Taylor Greene?

Marjorie Taylor Greene has long been known for her rabid loyalty to Donald Trump and his MAGA agenda, to the extent that it would not be surprising if she were to throw a drink in someone’s face for, say, expressing skepticism over the president’s long-promised border wall. During her nearly five years in Congress, the Georgia representative has “joke[d]” that January 6 would have been successful had she organized it; demonized transgender people; lobbed Islamophobic attacks; and embraced the most batshit of conspiracy theories, a.k.a. Trump’s bread and butter. If Politico were to report that she was planning to show up to Trump’s State of the Union address with an American flag painted on her face and the words “Biological Ladies for Trump” written across her chest, people would be like, Yeah, that checks out.

Yet lately, Greene has been engaging in some extremely unexpected behavior: She’s broken with Trump and Team MAGA on numerous issues, and quite vocally at that. In early June, for example, she took to X to criticize the “big, beautiful” bill, writing that if she had actually read the full text of Trump’s signature legislation, she “would have voted NO.” (Like all but two House Republicans, she ultimately voted to pass the version that became law.)

A couple of weeks later, she went to bat for Tucker Carlson after Trump lashed out at the former Fox News host for saying the US should not support Israel’s attacks on Iran. Following a Truth Social post in which the president called Carlson “kooky” and said someone should tell him “IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON,” Greene took to X to tell her followers: “Tucker Carlson…unapologetically believes the same things I do. That if we don’t fight for our own country and our own people then we will no longer have a country for our children and our grandchildren. And foreign wars/intervention/regime change put America last, kill innocent people, are making us broke, and will ultimately lead to our destruction. That’s not kooky. That’s what millions of Americans voted for. It’s what we believe is America First.”

Greene’s defense of Carlson came one day after she loudly declared that “everyone is finding out who are real America First/MAGA and who were fake,” adding that “anyone slobbering for the U.S. to become fully involved in the Israel/Iran war is not America First/MAGA,” a claim appearing to suggest that Trump himself, given his take on the situation, was not a real MAGA guy.

After Trump’s Justice Department announced no further information about disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein would be released, and that there was no evidence to charge anyone else in connection with his crimes, Greene said in an interview, “It’s a full reversal on what was all said beforehand, and people are just not willing to accept it.” Later, without mentioning Epstein by name, she wrote on X: “If you tell the base of people, who support you, of deep state treasonous crimes, election interference, blackmail, and rich powerful elite evil cabals, then you must take down every enemy of The People. If not. The base will turn and there’s no going back. Dangling bits of red meat no longer satisfies. They want the whole steak dinner and will accept nothing else.” (To be clear, it does not appear that the congresswoman, who is a huge fan of conspiracy theories, was suggesting that Trump and company should stop fanning the flames of such things, but rather that they should follow through on their pledges to expose them.)

More recently, Greene has said that Israel is committing genocide, that the situation in Gaza is “absolutely unacceptable,” and that America should stop providing military aid to Israel. She also insisted that “no American should face persecution of any kind because of their identity,” including “Muslim American[s],” a pretty shocking statement from a woman who once claimed practicing Muslims who believe in sharia law should not be allowed to serve in government. (Speaking of Muslim Americans, Greene praised* Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral primary campaign, calling it “unique and very smart,” whereas Trump has focused on threats to arrest the Democratic nominee to lead New York City.)

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Then, in an interview published by the Daily Mail over the weekend, Greene went so far as to suggest that there could be a world in which she leaves the Republican Party, saying, “I don’t know if the Republican Party is leaving me, or if I’m kind of not relating to [the] Republican Party as much anymore. I don’t know which one it is.”

While reiterating her full loyalty to Trump, she declared, “The Republican Party has turned its back on America First and the workers and just regular Americans,” adding of the GOP: “The course that it’s on, I don’t want to have anything to do with it, and I—I just don’t care anymore.” In the same interview, Greene said she believes Republican women are in touch with what conservative voters want, while the “good ole boys” of the party are not. “I think there’s other women in our party that are really sick and tired of the way men treat Republican women,” she said, adding that she thinks Representative Elise Stefanik—who was nominated by Trump to serve as UN ambassador, and then had her nomination pulled by the White House to protect the GOP majority in the House—“got shafted.”

Greene continued to speak about Stefanik: “I mean, she got screwed by [House Speaker] Mike Johnson, and she got screwed by the White House. I’m not blaming Trump, particularly. I’m blaming the people in the White House.” She then expressed disbelief that former national security adviser Mike Waltz—who lost his gig after mistakenly including a journalist in a Signal group chat that featured discussion of confidential military plans—was subsequently nominated for the UN spot. “How does he get awarded after ‘Signalgate?’ Isn’t that weird?” Greene wondered aloud, almost sounding like a rational person.

To be clear, no one should take Greene’s comments and surprising new policy positions to mean that she’s undergone a personality transplant and isn’t still the person who once suggested California wildfires were started by a Jewish space laser. In the same Daily Mail conversation, she talked about a desire to keep using Elon Musk’s DOGE to take a sledgehammer to the federal government, and she recently introduced a bill predicated on conspiracy theories about the weather. She has also continued to demonize immigrants—including those coming to the country legally—defended Vladimir Putin, and voted to defund NPR and PBS.

But her sudden willingness to break with Trump on issues close to the president’s heart is curious. Has she read the writing on the wall re: Republicans’ chances in the midterm elections and said “screw it”? She recently announced she won’t be running for Georgia governor or Senate, so it’s not clear what her ambitions are. Is she simply choosing to speak her mind and occasionally say things that sound reasonable, while still maintaining her unique brand of “What the fuck, lady?” Only time will tell.

*To be clear, she also said she doesn’t “agree with anything [Mamdani] says,” describing “his solutions” as “insane” and “socialist, probably communist,” though appreciating that “he was talking directly to the people.”