“This one!” gushed Donald Trump. “I never, ever, want to have her as my enemy. Marjorie Taylor Greene. She is so unbelievable.”
He was speaking in the thick of the 2020 election at a campaign rally in Georgia, where Taylor Greene’s unassailable rise towards a seat in Congress had caught Trump’s eye. He’d anointed her as “a future Republican star” that August.
As it turned out, Taylor Greene moved into her office on Capitol Hill after the election that Trump lost, leading to exile in Florida while MTG became one of the most visible MAGA political symbols and a fearsome defender of his legacy and return.
But this weekend, the enmity which Trump jokingly declared he would never wish for has arrived - with bells on.
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To the many interest groups Taylor Greene has castigated and insulted - and it’s a broad church - her post on X on Saturday about security warnings for her personal safety and “aggressive rhetoric attacking me” and “death threats” contained, at the very least, a full-circle irony.
Since her election five years ago, few political figures have issued verbal broadsides with the frequency and notoriety of Taylor Greene.
Now, having broken with Trump on everything from foreign policy to inflation to the ongoing Epstein files saga, the Georgia congresswoman found herself cut loose from the Trump tent. It was made official by a strained and strange Truth Social post issued by the president on Saturday morning.
“Lightweight Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Brown (Green grass turns Brown when it begins to ROT!), betrayed the entire Republican Party when she turned Left, performed poorly on the pathetic View, and became the RINO that we all know she always was.”
The reference to The View pertained to Taylor Greene’s recent appearance on the CNN political discussion show. The sight of this slow-motion car crash between the president and his most incendiary supporter has inevitably led to a cascade of performative Democrat gloating.
Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader delivered the message: “MTG is crushing Donald Trump right now. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Jasmine Crockett, the Texas Democrat with whom Taylor Greene engaged in several colourful and viciously personal spats in the House chamber, also chipped in.
“This almost feels like a moment where Marge should phone a friend … I’m here for you girl … I told you not to trust him … all he cares about is Himself (and protecting pedos) he never loved you. My granny always said, ‘be with the man that loves you more than you love him’. Trust me, sis, you are better off without him. The GWORLS are fighting."
Trump is an avid consumer of broadcast and social media. All of these little barbs will carry a sting. But the implications of Taylor Greene’s ideological defection will be more worrying. On Saturday she went so far as to share text messages she had sent to the president explaining her position on the Epstein files.
“Apparently this is what sent him over the edge,” she wrote to her X followers.
“The Epstein files. And, of course, he’s coming after me hard to make an example to scare all the other republicans before next weeks vote to release the Epstein files.”
The remarks are uncannily similar to those made by scores of Democrat politicians since the Epstein saga was thrust back into the spotlight with the release of a blizzard of correspondence in recent weeks. Taylor Greene went on to defend her record of supporting Trump to the hilt before adding an important equivocation.
“But I don’t worship or serve Donald Trump. I worship God, Jesus is my saviour, and I serve my district GA14 and the American people. For me, I remain America First and America Only.”
That was always the case. The crucial distinction between Trump and Taylor Greene is that the president is driven by an opportunistic mindset while his disenchanted MAGA ally is guided by a fundamentalist zeal.
The signs were there from the very beginning, in Taylor Greene’s shocking haranguing of survivors of the Parkland school shooting. A 2019 video in which she follows David Hogg, one of the survivors and a prominent gun-control activist, as he makes his way to the Capitol building to meet senators, was circulated shortly after her election to congress in 2021. Taylor Greene has a frontier- mindset when it comes to gun ownership and the 14th Amendment.
While Trump has unconvincingly made claims to owning a gun, there is scant evidence that he has any interest in gun culture beyond its importance to many of his voters. In the terse weeks after the January 6th riots, Taylor Greene established herself as a staunch defender of Trump’s behaviour that day, leading to Democratic calls for her expulsion from the House.
[ Trump faces prospect of congressional vote on releasing Epstein filesOpens in new window ]
Taylor Greene did not apologise, nor was she expelled and established herself as a MAGA firebrand through the Biden administration.
It was her voice that could be heard interrupting president Biden during his State of the Union address in March 2024, repeatedly shouting “say her name”. Beneath her red blazer Taylor Greene wore a white T-shirt with the same slogan. The name in question belonged to Laken Riley, the Georgia nursing student who was sexually assaulted and murdered the previous month while out for a morning jog in a forest park near the Athens campus of the University of Georgia. The perpetrator was soon identified as Jose Ibarra, a Venezuelan man who had entered the US illegally.
The shocking crime became, for the Republican campaign, a symbol of the failures of the Biden administration on border security. When the Laken Riley Bill was passed into law this year, Taylor Greene and New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez clashed in a House debate over its implications.
“If you’re a dreamer, all someone has to do is point a finger and you will be rounded up,” Ocasio-Cortez said, predicting scenes that have since played out throughout the country.
“Without being found guilty of a crime they’ll be rounded up. And we have seen things like this happen before in the Patriot Act; in the wake of the travesty of 9/11 a fundamental suspension of American civil liberties. That is what we are seeing here today.”
[ After Trump split, Epstein said he could ‘take him down’Opens in new window ]
For Taylor Greene, though, the issue was simple.
“People who come across our border illegally are not Americans and they do not have rights here. And that is exactly why anytime they break a law, any time they cross into our country they should be rounded up and shipped out as fast as possible.”
In recent weeks, Ocasio-Cortez told followers on her social media livestream that Taylor Greene’s estrangement from Trump lay in his decision not to back her ambitions to run for the Senate, dismissing it as a “revenge tour”.
Now, Taylor Greene faces a challenge to her congressional seat after Trump made it known he wants her primaries. Laura Loomer, the far-right conspiracist against whom Taylor Greene looks comparatively centrist, quickly took to social media to float the idea of moving to the 14th district.
The 14th district branch of the Republican Party has issued a statement underlining its “full and unwavering support” of the congresswoman.
“While the President of the United States represents the nation as a whole, Congresswoman Greene represents the people of Northwest Georgia and she has done so with clarity, resolve and integrity,” Jim Tully, the chairman wrote.
Meanwhile Taylor Greene aligned herself with the Epstein survivors, stating she now has “a small understanding of the fear and pressure” through which they spoke out.
[ Larry Summers, former US Treasury secretary, slammed Trump in Epstein emailsOpens in new window ]
Countless opponents will find a supreme irony in Taylor Greene addressing what she has termed “the political industrial complex” and demanding that “the toxic violent nature of American politics must end. Our country is worth saving and it can only be done if we pull together and save ourselves.”
But save ourselves from whom?
So, Donald Trump has lost one of the most recognisable and uncompromising MAGA megaphones. And he had the instinct to recognise as far back as 2020 what that could mean.
