Is Marjorie Taylor Greene actually attempting to take down Trump?

Sorry, Elon Musk — it’s wanting just like the rupture between President Donald Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) would possibly truly be the messiest breakup of Trump’s second time period.

When you haven’t heard, Greene — sure, of Jewish area lasers fame — appears to be turning towards Trump over his hesitancy to name on the Division of Justice to launch all of its recordsdata referring to Jeffrey Epstein. “MTG,” as she’s identified, has lengthy claimed to be a robust supporter of Epstein’s victims. And for a very long time, she held that place whereas additionally defending Trump towards any and all criticisms.

However as Congress moved nearer to passing a invoice to make the recordsdata public, issues modified. In keeping with accessible reviews, Trump didn’t need the recordsdata launched. However MTG did — a lot so, in actual fact, that she was keen to incur his wrath within the course of.

“One thing occurred to her over the past interval of a month or two the place she modified, I feel, politically,” Trump mentioned final Friday, earlier than sending out Reality Social posts calling her “wacky,” a “ranting Lunatic,” and a “traitor” all through the weekend. He went on to rescind his help for MTG and urged one other Republican, presumably yet one more loyal to him and fewer targeted on Epstein’s crimes, to switch her.

After all, Greene fired again. Certainly, on Tuesday, the day the Home and the Senate each overwhelmingly voted to have the recordsdata launched, Greene responded: “I used to be referred to as a traitor by a person that I fought for 5, no, truly, six years for, and I gave him my loyalty without spending a dime,” she mentioned. “I’m not a traitor.”

This back-and-forth has, unsurprisingly, entertained a lot of the anti-Trump world. “Marjorie Taylor Greene is crushing Donald Trump proper now,” Home Democratic chief Hakeem Jeffries tweeted this week. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in the meantime, instructed that MTG is on a “revenge tour” to take down Trump. And one other high Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin, even instructed that there may very well be room for MTG amongst Democrats, “if she desires to come back over.”

As a daily shopper and observer of the assorted podcasts and different media ecosystems that MAGA and Trump allies inhabit, I had a sense this degree of triumphalism was at the least untimely, if not outright misguided. The reality, I’ve discovered, is extra difficult — and in some methods stranger — than the “MTG vs. Trump” narrative suggests. Merely put, it appears that evidently MTG isn’t attempting to avoid wasting MAGA from Trump a lot as she’s attempting to avoid wasting Trump from himself.

What liberals suppose MTG is saying

You may forgive the Trump crucial world for getting a bit enthusiastic about this messy struggle.

For the previous couple of weeks, MTG has been sounding a bit totally different than the model we received to know over the past 5 to 6 years. She’s apologized for her position in creating “poisonous politics,” claiming she was duped by the QAnon conspiracy. She had no thought, she has insisted, that there was one thing antisemitic about suggesting a “Rothschild” funding financial institution, and area lasers, had been behind California’s wildfires.

“It’s been one thing I’ve thought of so much, particularly since Charlie Kirk was assassinated,” she mentioned of her earlier rhetoric throughout an look on CNN this week. “I’m solely answerable for myself and my very own phrases and actions, and I’m dedicated — and I’ve been engaged on this so much recently — to place down the knives in politics.”

The rebrand appears to be working, at the least a little bit; even main Democrats are saying she’s had a “surprisingly enlightened few weeks.”

That, in flip, has led to some raised eyebrows and real curiosity — may MTG be a helpful ally now to take down Trump and splinter his MAGA motion?

“I feel she’s going by an ‘aha’ second,” Ana Navarro, one of many View co-hosts who interviewed her on the present final month, questioned after it. “I hope this … means she turns into a voice of motive, an unbiased voice … not simply toeing a celebration line.” Her co-hosts appeared to agree, saying it was “heartening” to see her sticking up for the Epstein victims.”

In the meantime, others are framing this pivot as an indication that MTG is fleeing “Trump’s sinking ship” — that she’s merely ditching a “frail” authoritarian whose motion is about to “crumble.”

However this “strange-new-respect remedy,” as one conservative author put it, is perhaps lacking one thing a little bit extra difficult.

What MTG is truly saying

Having a look at Greene’s interviews and feedback from the late summer season and into the autumn, I observed a development.

When she advised the View co-hosts that “nothing has modified about me,” she gave the impression to be talking earnestly. And in at the least this respect, I imagine her: She is a real believer within the core precepts of the MAGA motion, and feels just like the president has been led astray by advisers who solely faux to grasp and worth MAGA the best way she does. For a time, at the least, she appeared to suppose she may carry Trump again on monitor, and she or he blamed the occasion institution — and components of the conservative media — for misguiding him.

It is perhaps useful to stipulate what these core beliefs are. Fortunately, she and Tucker Carlson not too long ago outlined the 5 pillars of MAGA in an October dialog: America First, Safe Borders, No Pointless Wars, Finish Globalization, and Defend Free Speech.

These had been the ideas that, MTG advised Carlson in late October, had been what led her to turn into a Trump foot soldier. “I like that man,” she remembered considering. “These are all the explanations I supported him from the very starting when he stood on that stage amongst 17 Republican presidential candidates. And the remainder of them, I assumed, had been slimy politicians. However Donald Trump spoke the language that I understood, and he was the one which made sense to me.”

The remainder of this dialog, and one other October interview she gave to the podcaster and comic Tim Dillon, show the arc that led MTG to feud with Trump.

“I’m MAGA by and thru. No person can problem my credentials. I used to be by no means a by no means Trumper. I used to be at all times one hundred pc Donald Trump, one hundred pc America first. However right here we’re,” she advised Dillon.

“I’m an motion particular person. Don’t inform me you’re gonna do these items and never do them. And that’s what I’ve at all times been upset over, proper?” she mentioned. “I’m actually grateful to a whole lot of the issues the president is doing, however I’m actually upset with the route Congress goes.”

These different points she’s criticized the administration and her occasion on — not ending the struggle in Gaza, continued overseas assist to Ukraine and Israel, monetary help to Argentina — have been compounding. However it appears the Epstein recordsdata problem is what triggered her to take the following step and instantly problem the president.

Nonetheless, it’s necessary to acknowledge that none of this appears to recommend that she desires a everlasting rift with Trump. She’s already mentioned, in actual fact, that she is going to proceed to help him and his agenda. She even raised the opportunity of a extra formal apology — however solely as soon as the Epstein recordsdata had been made public first. She desires the MAGA motion to have the ability to ship for its voters and believers. And she or he nonetheless appears to imagine Trump is vital to doing that.

“I like Donald Trump, and I get to say these items as a result of I like him a lot,” she advised Carlson. “I get to say these items, and I get to inform the reality as a result of when the MAGA practice left the station, I used to be on it the whole time. … I get to say when issues are going sideways and after they’re going incorrect. … Excuse my language, however I’m so pissed off at Republicans proper now.”

Do these phrases sound like a newly minted Trump-hater? Not fairly. However they’re not the phrases of the previous MTG, both. The place the connection between these two MAGA leaders will go is unsure. What’s truly within the Epstein recordsdata would possibly truly scramble this dynamic. However at the least one factor will stay true: The previous MTG-Trump romance is useless, even when a brand new one reemerges.