Sorry, Elon Musk — it’s looking like the rupture between President Donald Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) might actually be the messiest breakup of Trump’s second term.
If you haven’t heard, Greene — yes, of Jewish space lasers fame — seems to be turning against Trump over his hesitancy to call on the Department of Justice to release all of its files relating to Jeffrey Epstein. “MTG,” as she’s known, has long claimed to be a strong supporter of Epstein’s victims. And for a long time, she held that position while also defending Trump against any and all criticisms.
But as Congress moved closer to passing a bill to make the files public, things changed. According to available reports, Trump did not want the files released. But MTG did — so much so, in fact, that she was willing to incur his wrath in the process — and now eventually leave Congress at the start of 2026.
“Something happened to her over the last period of a month or two where she changed, I think, politically,” Trump said last Friday, before sending out Truth Social posts calling her “wacky,” a “ranting Lunatic,” and a “traitor” throughout the weekend. He went on to rescind his support for MTG and urged another Republican, presumably one more loyal to him and less focused on Epstein’s crimes, to replace her.
Of course, Greene fired back. Indeed, on Tuesday, the day the House and the Senate both overwhelmingly voted to have the files released, Greene responded: “I was called a traitor by a man that I fought for five, no, actually, six years for, and I gave him my loyalty for free,” she said. “I am not a traitor.”
This back-and-forth has, unsurprisingly, entertained much of the anti-Trump world. “Marjorie Taylor Greene is crushing Donald Trump right now,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries tweeted this week. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, meanwhile, suggested that MTG is on a “revenge tour” to take down Trump. And another top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin, even suggested that there could be room for MTG among Democrats, “if she wants to come over.”
As a regular consumer and observer of the various podcasts and alternative media ecosystems that MAGA and Trump allies inhabit, I had a feeling this level of triumphalism was at least premature, if not outright misguided. The truth, I’ve found, is more complicated — and in some ways stranger — than the “MTG vs. Trump” narrative suggests. Simply put, it seems that MTG has been on a mission to save Trump from himself, and protect the MAGA movement in the process. But the last week in particular appears to have truly tired her out — and shown her that her mission seems futile while working within the system, and while trying to regain Trump’s love.
What liberals think MTG is saying
You can forgive the Trump-critical world for getting a bit excited about this messy fight.
For the last few weeks, MTG has been sounding a bit different than the version we got to know over the last five to six years. She’s apologized for her role in creating “toxic politics,” claiming she was duped by the QAnon conspiracy. She had no idea, she has insisted, that there was something antisemitic about suggesting a “Rothschild” investment bank, and space lasers, were behind California’s wildfires.
“It’s been something I’ve thought about a lot, especially since Charlie Kirk was assassinated,” she said of her previous rhetoric during an appearance on CNN this week. “I’m only responsible for myself and my own words and actions, and I’m committed — and I’ve been working on this a lot lately — to put down the knives in politics.”
The rebrand seems to be working, at least a little; even leading Democrats are saying she’s had a “surprisingly enlightened few weeks.”
That, in turn, has led to some raised eyebrows and genuine curiosity — could MTG be a useful ally now to take down Trump and splinter his MAGA movement?
“I think she’s going through an ‘aha’ moment,” Ana Navarro, one of The View’s co-hosts who interviewed Greene on the show last month, wondered after it. “I hope this…means she becomes a voice of reason, an independent voice…not just toeing a party line.” Her co-hosts seemed to agree, saying it was “heartening” to see her sticking up for the Epstein victims.”
Meanwhile, others are framing this pivot as a sign that MTG is fleeing “Trump’s sinking ship” — that she’s simply ditching a “frail” authoritarian whose movement is about to “crumble.”
But this “strange-new-respect treatment,” as one conservative writer put it, might be missing something a little more complicated.
What MTG is actually saying
Taking a look at Greene’s interviews and comments from the late summer and into the fall, I noticed a trend.
When she told The View co-hosts that “nothing has changed about me,” she seemed to be speaking earnestly. And in at least this respect, I believe her: She is a true believer in the core precepts of the MAGA movement, and feels like the president has been led astray by advisers who only pretend to understand and value MAGA the way she does. For a time, at least, she seemed to think she could bring Trump back on track, and she blamed the party establishment — and elements of the conservative media — for misguiding him.
It might be helpful to outline what those core beliefs are. Luckily, she and Tucker Carlson recently outlined the five pillars of MAGA in an October conversation: America First, Secure Borders, No Pointless Wars, End Globalization, and Protect Free Speech.
Those were the principles that, MTG told Carlson in late October, were what led her to become a Trump foot soldier. “I love that man,” she remembered thinking. “Those are all the reasons I supported him from the very beginning when he stood on that stage among 17 Republican presidential candidates. And the rest of them, I thought, were slimy politicians. But Donald Trump spoke the language that I understood, and he was the one that made sense to me.”
The rest of this conversation, and another October interview she gave to the podcaster and comedian Tim Dillon, demonstrate the arc that led MTG to feud with Trump.
“I’m MAGA through and through. Nobody can challenge my credentials. I was never a never Trumper. I was always 100 percent Donald Trump, 100 percent America First. But here we are,” she told Dillon.
“I’m an action person. Don’t tell me you’re gonna do these things and not do them. And that’s what I’ve always been upset over, right?” she said. “I’m really grateful to a lot of the things the president is doing, but I’m really upset with the direction Congress is going.”
Those other issues she’s criticized the administration and her party on — not ending the war in Gaza, continued foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel, financial assistance to Argentina — have been compounding. But it seems the Epstein files issue is what caused her to take the next step and directly challenge the president — only for the president to personally attack her.
Still, it’s important to recognize that none of this seems to suggest that she wanted a permanent rift with Trump. In interviews this week, she said, in fact, that she would continue to support him and his agenda. She even raised the possibility of a more formal apology — but only once the Epstein files had been made public first. And the unifying theme of her most recent comments is that she wants the MAGA movement to be able to deliver for its voters and believers. She kept holding out that Trump was the key to doing that — but in her resignation letter and comments on X, she seems to have run out of hope, believing the establishment forces and special interests who now surround Trump are too entrenched for her to have influence. (Notably, she describes these interests as trying to “replace” her.)
“[M]ost of the Establishment Republicans, who secretly hate him and who stabbed him in the back and never defended him against anything, have all been welcomed in after the election,” she wrote. “If I am cast aside by MAGA Inc and replaced by Neocons, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Military Industrial War Complex, foreign leaders, and the elite donor class that can’t even relate to real Americans, then many common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well.”
It’s the logical conclusion of a true believer who feels betrayed, left out in the cold, and has finally decided that the system isn’t worth the fight to change it. Compare those sentiments to what she was telling Carlson just a few weeks ago:
“I love Donald Trump, and I get to say these things because I love him so much,” she said. “I get to say these things, and I get to tell the truth because when the MAGA train left the station, I was on it the entire time. … I get to say when things are going sideways and when they’re going wrong. … Excuse my language, but I am so pissed off at Republicans right now.”
Do these comments sound like a newly minted Trump-hater? Not quite — they’re the words of a Republican Party hater, of a hater of Congress and the political system.
But they’re not the words of the old MTG, either. Where the relationship between these two MAGA leaders will go next is uncertain. What’s actually revealed in the Epstein files might scramble this dynamic again. But at least one thing will remain true: The old MTG-Trump romance is dead, and it looks increasingly unlikely there will be a second act.
Update, November 22, 11 am ET: This story was originally published November 19 and has been updated with news of Greene’s resignation.
