Is Greene the new keeper of MAGA?

Erin Mansfield

USA TODAY

Georgia Republican is now a Trump-free zone

Marjorie Taylor Greene may be the freest woman in America.

In months of TV appearances, she has taken on men in her own party and the president who inspired her to run for office. She broke with Republican leadership to help force a vote in Congress to release the Justice Department’s Jeffrey Epstein files, in direct defiance of President Donald Trump.

And when Trump came crashing down on her in an 11th-hour pressure campaign, she didn’t buckle. He denounced Greene as a “traitor,” using words she said “could radicalize people and put my life in danger.”

Then, the same woman who built her right-wing persona with coarse and flamboyant attacks on a group of liberal congresswomen made a stunning apology.

“I would like to say humbly I’m sorry for taking part in the toxic politics,” the firebrand Georgia Republican lawmaker told CNN. “It’s very bad for our country, and it’s been something that I’ve thought about a lot.”

Within less than a week, she announced she would resign from Congress, posting a four-page statement eviscerating Congress and restating

her long-held beliefs.

Greene’s heart-to-heart comments have been jarring liberals and anyone else who associates her with conspiratorial beliefs and outrageous comments. Even Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from Georgia, told USA TODAY he never thought he’d find himself agreeing with Greene on anything.

In the process, Greene has doubled down on her leadership in the Make America Great Again movement that she kept alive while Trump was out of office and positioned herself as the protector of the same working-class Americans who got him elected, her allies say.

Is Greene a new person? Or has this other side of her been sitting there this whole time − seen by her old CrossFit clients in northwest Georgia, and next to the instant cocktail machine she once had in her office in Washington?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, says she won’t believe Greene has changed until she backs up her words with action. Greene once filmed herself telling Ocasio- Cortez through her office’s mail slot to “be a big girl” and get rid of her diaper.

“When you’re in a position of power like she is, you can’t just talk the talk, but you also have to walk the walk,” Ocasio-Cortez said in an Instagram livestream.

But Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky who is friends with Greene, says this is who she is, and people are just getting to know her.

“There’s only one Marjorie,” he said. “Marjorie is what you see.”

The QAnon firecracker

Greene, whose staff declined an interview for this story, came to Congress with a reputation for supporting the conspiratorial QAnon movement. Sworn in just days before the riot at the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, she has been an outspoken supporter of theories that the 2020 president election was stolen.

She went after the liberal “Squad” and tried to get President Joe Biden impeached. She vocally opposed transgender rights in sports and spoke of gun rights as a way of empowering women.

Greene wasn’t in office long before most Democrats and a handful of Republicans voted to bar her from House committees over old social media posts surfaced that included violent rhetoric and out-there conspiracies. Greene had called for then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to be put to death and suggested California wildfires were started by lasers orbiting the Earth for the benefit of Gov. Gavin Newsom, power companies and a prominent Jewish banking family.

Her response? Learn the rules of the House – and use them to make trouble. In 2021, Greene forced Republicans and Democrats alike to record their votes on bills instead of passing them in voice votes. That meant constituents could hold their representatives accountable for every vote, and it delayed Democrats, who ran the House at the time, in passing bills.

“If you want to give me some time on my hands, then you’d better believe that I’m going to find smart ways to use it,” Greene said at a 2021 Florida rally.

Massie, who has also been targeted by Trump, recalled an episode when Greene asked for a motion to adjourn, something that usually delays action on a bill. That’s when, he said, then-Rep. Van Taylor, a Republican from Texas, walked up. “I know you’re very passionate about this, Marjorie, but you’ve got to think about this logically,” Massie said he witnessed Taylor telling her.

Massie, who described the incident as “mansplaining,” said Greene kept her cool.

“I just saw her calmly let him be his stupid male self, and then she responded with logic and reason,” Massie said. “She’s used to putting up with that, and she’s definitely not intimidated.”

Sweeter than sweet tea?

The people who know Greene best say she’s not putting on an act. They say she fights for people and is kind, intelligent and maternal.

Greene grew up outside Atlanta and has three grown children, whom she often references in policy discussions about the next generation. For years, she was a part-owner of the construction company her father started in northwest Georgia.

She later opened a CrossFit gym with a business partner. In a radio appearance in 2015, she spoke in a delicate tone that betrayed the firebrand reputation she would gain on the national stage, explaining how a gym buddy got her into the workouts.

“She was like, ‘Do you want to try out this crazy, underground cult fitness thing called CrossFit?’” Greene said. She referred to herself as a coach, not an investor. She called her customers “friends.” She encouraged women not to be afraid of lifting weights.

Jackie Harling, chairman of the Walker County Republican Party in northwest Georgia, says Greene is truthful, motivated by her children, and “could even be described as sweet.”

“You’ll see her at local events, churches and community gatherings,” Harling said. “She’s not hiding behind Washington walls.”

It’s not just the people who agree with her who say this.

Rep. Ro Khanna, a liberal Democrat from Silicon Valley, said he got to know Greene while working on the Epstein files bill. Greene is one of only four Republicans, including Massie, who forced the issue to a vote.

Now, Khanna and Greene work on affordability issues together.

“She is blunt and understands the frustrations of Americans who have seen the American dream disappear,” Khanna said. “And she’s, to me, been a person who’s kept her commitments.”

Massie said he has dinner with Greene often and even hosted her at his wedding Oct. 19. He said too many people dismiss Greene when they see her blond hair and hear her Southern accent. Before they know it, he says, she’s outsmarting them.

“The biggest mistake people make − to their own detriment − about Marjorie Taylor Greene is they underestimate her IQ, which is extremely high,” he said. “They buy into this caricature of her that’s been portrayed for years.”

A working-class populism

These days, Greene says she doesn’t support QAnon anymore and that she has learned a lot about antisemitism. She breaks with Trump at times but does so calmly, and she says she’s modeling polite disagreement.

“I think she’s not afraid of making people mad because she knows she can make friends with them later,” Massie said. “A lot of people don’t have that skill. And if she’s making them mad, it’s not personal.”

Greene has criticized the rollout of cuts to Affordable Care Act premium subsidies; funding for Ukraine’s defense against Russia; and Trump’s proposed $20 billion bailout of Argentina. She defends Trump’s border policies. But the part that’s winning over detractors is her advocacy for working-class people who make up the MAGA base.

“I represent a district that is a rural manufacturing district − blue-collar workers, and people who have been crushed by decades of failure in Washington, DC − and so I have no problem pointing fingers at everyone,” Greene said in an appearance Nov. 4 on ABC’s “The View.”

Lawrence Rosenthal, chair of the UC Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies, said Greene’s beliefs align perfectly with 2016 Trumpism. But he said the president has followed through only on an anti-illegal-immigrant agenda and not campaign promises to help the working class.

“She is being true to a vision that the current administration has thrown out the window,” he said. “Taking things out on the working class, on poor Americans, on people who need food stamps − that isn’t what somebody like Majorie Taylor Greene was signing up for.”

During the record 43-day government shutdown, Greene repeatedly called out House Speaker Mike Johnson for not coming up with a way to relieve insurance costs for Americans after cutting Affordable Care Act marketplace subsidies as part of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which she supported. Premiums for about 22 million customers on HealthCare.gov will double in 2026 without the subsidies.

“I will take her seeing the light at any point in time,” Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat from Texas, said Oct. 7. Greene famously started a scene in a House hearing in 2024 when she told Crockett, “I think your fake eyelashes are getting in the way.” Crockett shot back that Greene was a badly built bleach blonde.

Greene’s stance on health care isn’t new: She has been tweeting about her family’s high Obamacare premiums since at least 2022. She has called health insurance a “giant scam.”

Greene was the most outspoken advocate for forcing the Justice Department to release its investigative files on Epstein, the suspected sex trafficker who died in prison, even though Trump − a former friend of Epstein’s − opposed the measure. At a news conference Sept. 3, she framed the debate around sexual abuse, good versus evil and what she called Epstein’s powerful “cabal.”

“This is the most important fight we can wage here in Congress − is fighting for the innocent people that never received justice − and the women behind me have never received justice,” she said in an appearance with several of Epstein’s accusers.

Khanna, the bill’s lead Democratic sponsor, joked that he never thought he’d do a news conference with Greene. And then he hugged her.

But as the bill got closer to a vote, Trump cracked down. Trump withdrew his endorsement of Greene on Nov. 14 and encouraged other Republicans to run against her. “All I see ‘Wacky’ Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!” he wrote on Truth Social. “I can’t take a ranting Lunatic’s call every day.”

Trump wrote that she turned on him when his team showed her a poll in May showing that she couldn’t win a race for U.S. Senate or governor in Georgia.

Ocasio-Cortez, the liberal New York Democrat, agrees. She said in a livestream Nov. 4: “Trumpland shut down Marjorie Taylor Greene’s personal ambitions to run for Senate, and she has been on a revenge tour ever since.”

Greene said in May that she decided not to run because the Senate is “not for the American people.”

“Apparently this is what sent him over the edge,” Greene wrote on social media Nov. 14, sharing a text she sent to Trump saying Epstein “was the spider that wove the web of the deep state.”

“Stop ignoring the women,”she wrote to a Trump aide, referring to Epstein’s accusers. “Many of them literally voted for President Trump and say so publicly. Them being raped as teenagers is not a hoax.”

Greene said she received threats because of Trump’s criticism. She said it was a small taste of what Epstein accusers experienced.

The keeper of the flame

None of this means Greene has sworn off the Make America Great Again movement. If anything, her allies say, she’s leading it.

Massie said that Greene is more of a keeper of MAGA than Trump himself, and that she says what the MAGA base is thinking when he’s off course.

He said he has seen Greene on the phone with Trump, and she can flip a switch from laughing with the president to telling him “in very serious terms” that one of his positions is wrong.

“She’s been able to change his mind on things when she thought he was wrong and nobody else will tell him,” Massie said.

Those days may be over. But Greene is leaving the door open.

“I certainly hope that we can make up,” she said Nov. 16. “I’m a Christian, and one of the most important parts of our faith is forgiveness, and that’s something I’m committed to.”

Later that day, as more Republicans started to side with Greene, Trump capitulated. He told Republicans in the House to vote to release the Epstein files. The Senate passed the bill unanimously, and the president signed it into law on Nov. 19.

Trump didn’t say why he pivoted. “In the moment it might look like she’s losing,” Massie said. “But ultimately, she’s never really lost an argument.”

Contributing: Zachary Schemerle