{"id":17617,"date":"2026-01-12T20:55:25","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T04:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=17617"},"modified":"2026-01-18T03:00:53","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T11:00:53","slug":"the-notorius-m-t-g-the-new-yorker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=17617","title":{"rendered":"“The Notorius M.T.G.”, The New Yorker"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The congresswoman split with the President over the Epstein files, then she quit. Where will she go from here?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Charles Bethea<\/a>, January 12, 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Kevin McCarthy, the former Speaker of the House, believes that Greene is uniquely in touch with the\u00a0maga\u00a0base, calling her the \u201ccanary in the coal mine\u201d of the G.O.P. Photograph by Mark Peterson \/ Redux for The New Yorker<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019ve been doing is being just completely honest in my statements,\u201d Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said in mid-October. She was sitting beside the comedian Tim Dillon, during a taping of \u201cThe Tim Dillon Show,\u201d a kind of Joe Rogan lite that recently featured Senator Bernie Sanders. It was a warmup of sorts for appearances that she\u2019d soon make on center-left talk shows\u2014\u201cReal Time with Bill Maher,\u201d \u201cThe View\u201d\u2014during a lengthy government shutdown that Greene blamed on her fellow-Republicans. She wore knee-high black leather boots, a jean jacket, and a solemn expression. Dillon had just asked Greene why she was suddenly saying things that resonated with a wider range of people, \u201cincluding liberals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Liberals have had little to console them in the past year, and it was perplexing that one small bright spot was Greene, the maga<\/em> congresswoman from Georgia. Since her arrival in Congress, in 2021, Greene\u2019s initials have become as recognizable as those of the late liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg\u2014who Greene falsely alleged, a year before Ginsburg\u2019s death, had been replaced by a body double. \u201cMTG\u201d is the title of a 2023 memoir by Greene, released by Donald Trump, Jr.,\u2019s publishing house, and her initials appear on merchandise marketed to both her fans and critics: \u201cmtg is my spirit animal<\/em>,\u201d \u201cdefund mtg<\/em>,\u201d \u201comg mtg wtf<\/em>.\u201d It\u2019s also the name of a hagiographic song by the maga<\/em> rapper Forgiato Blow, in whose music video Greene appears steely-eyed sitting on the back of a lowrider and on a throne. \u201cA real businesswoman, A.O.C.\u2019s a featherweight,\u201d Blow raps. \u201cA southern belle, a little hood: watch her shake and bake.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t care what occupation you have in life,\u201d Kevin McCarthy, the former Speaker of the House, told me recently. \u201cWhen people know you by a three-letter acronym, you\u2019ve really built a following.\u201d Even before entering Congress, Greene gained notoriety for espousing various conspiracy theories: that the Rothschilds had used solar generators in space that triggered wildfires, and that a cabal of liberal \u00e9lites was eating the flesh of children. After joining Congress, she called Democrats \u201cthe party of pedophiles,\u201d and, as some Americans fretted over the possibility of an impending civil war, she demanded a \u201cnational divorce.\u201d John Cowan, a neurosurgeon in northwest Georgia whom Greene beat for the Republican nomination in her district, has called her Empty G, a homophone for her initials which captures a persistent belief in her vacuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Late last year, Greene earned a new name: traitor. In July, she\u2019d become the first Republican in Congress to describe the killing in Gaza as a \u201cgenocide.\u201d In August, referring to the G.O.P., she told the\u00a0Daily Mail<\/em>, \u201cThe course that it\u2019s on, I don\u2019t want to have anything to do with it.\u201d In October, she sided with Democrats pushing to extend subsidies to the Affordable Care Act, writing on X, \u201cNo I\u2019m not towing the party line on this, or playing loyalty games.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. I\u2019m carving my own lane.\u201d She told Tucker Carlson that Republicans \u201care literally slaves to all the big industries in Washington.\u201d She described Speaker Mike Johnson\u2019s leadership during the shutdown as \u201cbasically pathetic.\u201d (Johnson characterized their relationship as one of \u201cintense fellowship.\u201d) Trump\u2019s adviser Dan Scavino unfollowed her on X.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Woman<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe had no interest in politics,\u201d a Georgia G.O.P. operative said. \u201cShe obviously never studied history. And she\u2019s speaking to a lot of people who don\u2019t know history.\u201d He went on, \u201cYou may think she\u2019s a moron, but she gets where people are on things.\u201dPhotograph by Elijah Nouvelage \/ Getty<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

During his 2024 campaign, Trump had expressed a willingness to release files related to the case of Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and sexual predator. Then, back in office, he reneged. Greene was among a small but strident group of Republicans in Congress who refused to move on. \u201cThe truth needs to come out, and the government holds the truth,\u201d she said, in September. CNN\u2019s Wolf Blitzer called Greene \u201ccourageous.\u201d Whoopi Goldberg, on \u201cThe View,\u201d labelled her \u201cthe voice of reason.\u201d \u201cI never thought that I would say this,\u201d Bernie Sanders said, \u201cbut you have somebody like Marjorie Taylor Greene saying, \u2018You know what? I was elected by my constituents. That\u2019s who I\u2019m beholden to, not the President of the United States.\u2019\u00a0\u201d Trump, for his part, called her \u201cMarjorie Traitor Brown.\u201d During the fallout, she announced that she was resigning from Congress, effective on January 5th. It\u2019s not clear what her future holds. \u201cIt\u2019s all so absurd and completely unserious,\u201d Greene wrote, in her resignation letter, referring to current politics in Washington. She imagined Trump supporting her opponents in her next primary: \u201cI have too much self-respect and dignity to defend the president against impeachment after he hatefully dumped tens of millions of dollars against me and tried to destroy me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Dillon\u2019s show, Greene questioned Trump\u2019s approach to deportations (\u201cThat needs to be a smarter plan\u201d), the recent U.S. bailout of Argentina (\u201cHuh?\u201d), and the priorities of his base (\u201cI don\u2019t think those people are being served\u201d). She was, she said, no longer willing to \u201cwear the Republican jersey.\u201d Dillon suggested that Greene might run for President in 2028. \u201cOh, my goodness, I hate politics so much, Tim,\u201d Greene replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI know, but you are<\/em> a congresswoman.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, I\u2019ve seen a few people saying, \u2018She\u2019s running,\u2019 \u201d Greene continued. \u201cWhat I\u2019m doing right now is I very much want to fix problems. And I am genuinely angry on behalf of every American, even if they\u2019re a Democrat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMarjorie Taylor Greene, ladies and gentlemen, our next President,\u201d Dillon said, in closing. \u201cSorry, J. D. Vance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Betting markets soon opened on Greene\u2019s leaving the Republican Party and, separately, on her being the Republican Presidential nominee in 2028. For a time, in the latter, she trailed only Vance and Marco Rubio in the odds. The right-wing activist Laura Loomer denounced her repeatedly on X: \u201cNever seen a more opportunistic woman before.\u201d Josh McKoon, the chairman of the Republican Party of Georgia, told me that he thought Greene\u2019s publicity tour was canny. \u201cThere\u2019s a debate about the direction of the Republican Party going forward,\u201d he said. \u201cSomeone who has a broader footprint and has introduced themselves to more voters, I think, will have more to say about what that future looks like.\u201d But, McKoon confessed, he wasn\u2019t entirely sure what M.T.G. was up to. All he knew, he said, \u201cis if she believes it, she\u2019s going to share it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greene grew up in Cumming, Georgia, a mostly white community northeast of Atlanta. Her father ran a construction company, Taylor Commercial, and dabbled in pseudoscience. He once published an essay called \u201cThe Taylor Effect,\u201d in which he claims to have discovered \u201can undeniable correlation\u201d between stock-market prices and \u201cthe relative positions of the sun, earth, and moon.\u201d Her childhood included water skiing, \u201cThriller\u201d watch parties, and serving as the manager of the school soccer team. \u201cShe was a good girl,\u201d Leslie Hamburger, a friend from that time, recently recalled. \u201cShe was popular, but she was very focussed on getting good grades. I think she ran for class president, but I don\u2019t think she won.\u201d Another student brought a gun to school\u2014\u201cHe took our entire school hostage,\u201d Greene later said\u2014but no one was hurt. Greene became the first person in her family to graduate from college, at the University of Georgia, where she married a tall, business-minded classmate named Perry Greene, with whom she raised three kids in the Atlanta suburbs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By her late thirties, though, Greene seemed unmoored. Around 2012, she went to work at a CrossFit gym owned by James Cox Chambers, Jr., the grandson of an Atlanta billionaire named Anne Cox Chambers. He was a passionate socialist\u2014another gym of his barred \u201ccops, active military, landlords, and capitalists.\u201d Greene, meanwhile, had recently been baptized at an Atlanta-area megachurch. During the ceremony, she\u2019d read from the Bible about martyrdom. She seemed, to Chambers, like a \u201cwealthy housewife who was a little bored.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greene invited Chambers to her family\u2019s large home, north of Atlanta, and, elsewhere, he watched her \u201cdrink liquor poolside,\u201d he recalled, \u201changing out with dudes who worked at the gym, avoiding her husband.\u201d I learned that two of those men had affairs with Greene. One of them, Craig Ivey, now refers to himself, on X, as \u201cthe polyamorous tantric sex guru.\u201d (Ivey declined to comment for this piece.) A former roommate of Ivey\u2019s from this period told me that Greene made little small talk on her way up to Ivey\u2019s room. The other man with whom Greene had an affair around this time told me that she \u201cnever talked politics\u201d and didn\u2019t seem to have career ambitions. The relationship lasted a few months. After they split, Greene texted him: \u201cYou make me feel like the only reason why you \u2018invested\u2019 in me was because I had sex with you. And now your washing your hands of me.\u201d (I was the first to report the affairs, which prompted Greene to text me, of the piece, \u201cIf we have another toilet paper shortage, I wouldn\u2019t wipe my ass with it.\u201d She copied her attorney, Lin Wood, who said that the story was \u201cintended to smear her with false accusations, half-truths, misrepresentations, out-of-context statements, and agenda driven lies.\u201d Wood subsequently turned on Greene, calling her \u201ca communist.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She remained married until 2022, when her husband filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. She is now engaged to Brian Glenn, a correspondent for the far-right Real America\u2019s Voice TV network, who is, like her, an enthusiastic consumer of raw milk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Woman<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2021, the House voted to strip her of her committee appointments over various troubling remarks, including her skepticism that a plane crashed into the Pentagon on 9\/11.Photograph by Al Drago \/ Bloomberg \/ Getty<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chambers found Greene\u2019s behavior noteworthy only in light of her professed Christianity. During the time they knew each other, she didn\u2019t seem to mind his revolutionary politics. \u201cI never heard anything of a political nature from her,\u201d he said. Fitness was her focus. Greene, who is about five feet two, was able to deadlift three hundred pounds, and in 2015 she finished sixty-second in the world among her age group at the CrossFit Games. \u201cShe was fit,\u201d Chambers said. \u201cBut not some great talent. It was just how she was getting her rocks off.\u201d Chambers thought that she\u2019d end up \u201ctrying to get her team to Southeast Regionals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, she went online. She found an audience there, and it grew as she embraced ideas affiliated with the far right. Between 2017 and 2019, writing on social media and for sites such as American Truth Seekers, she claimed that the Clintons were complicit in the murder of journalists, that Barack Obama was conspiring with North Korea, and that a mass shooting was secretly intended to prompt increased gun control. She endorsed the then nascent QAnon conspiracy theory, which fixated on the idea that the world was run by a global pedophile ring, and that Q, an anonymous insider, was working with Trump to overthrow it. In October of 2017, Greene said, \u201cQ is a Patriot.\u201d Referring to Trump\u2019s Presidency, she added, \u201cThis is a once in a lifetime opportunity to take this Global Cabal of Satan worshiping pedophiles out.\u201d In 2018, responding to a Facebook comment about hanging Hillary Clinton and Obama, Greene replied, \u201cStage is being set. Players are being put in place. We must be patient.\u201d (She later said that someone else had been managing her account.) In a YouTube video that year, she blamed the Clintons for the 1999 plane crash that killed J.F.K., Jr.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greene showed a taste for spectacle. She filed a petition to impeach Nancy Pelosi. She filmed herself hectoring David Hogg, a teen-age survivor of the Parkland school shooting, and admonishing participants in a Drag Queen Story Hour at a local library. \u201cYou\u2019re, like, \u2018Gee, I wonder if that is going to work,\u2019 \u201d McKoon, the Georgia G.O.P. chairman, told me. Years before, on a WordPress blog, Greene had reportedly described having \u201cnegative thoughts\u201d and wishing she had a \u201cswitch to turn [them] off.\u201d With political theatrics, she seemed to have found it. On Law Enforcement Today<\/em>, a police-owned media outlet to which Greene contributed, her bio described her as \u201ca proud Whiskey Patriot, entrepreneur, business owner, writer, commentator, speaker, defender of the Second Amendment, shooting enthusiast, CrossFit athlete, wife, and mother redeemed through grace.\u201d (Greene declined to speak to me for this story. A spokesperson, presented with a list of the story\u2019s assertions, said, \u201cThis appears to be nothing besides a slanderous hit piece,\u201d adding, \u201cI would encourage you to cancel this story, as nearly every statement that you have set forth is untrue.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In early 2019, Greene visited the U.S. Capitol with a group of gun-rights activists. She was turned away by Republican senators. But the group did meet Thomas Massie, a congressman from Kentucky, who would become a friend. \u201cShe handed me her card and said she was going to run for office,\u201d Massie told me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That spring, a campaign consultant in the Atlanta area received a call from Georgia\u2019s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. \u201cHe says, \u2018I have this lady who asked me about running for office,\u2019 \u201d the consultant told me. (Raffensperger declined to comment.) Greene soon hobbled into the consultant\u2019s office on crutches\u2014a CrossFit injury, apparently. She made the consultant\u2019s \u201cspidey sense\u201d go off, he recalled, saying that he detected volatility. She excitedly showed him the Hogg video. \u201cIt was silly,\u201d the consultant said. \u201cHe was an eighteen-year-old kid. But she thought it was important.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The consultant kept listening, though. \u201cShe had a kind of Batman complex,\u201d he said. \u201cSeeing herself as uniquely positioned to save America.\u201d She wanted to represent a district in North Atlanta, where she lived. This was going to be tough: its residents, diverse and well educated, seemed likely to recoil from disparaging remarks she had made about Muslims, among other things. Economic arguments, the consultant asserted, would be more effective with these voters. Her family\u2019s construction business, which Greene\u2019s father had sold, in the two-thousands, to Greene and her husband at the time, presented an opportunity. There was a potential downside, however, to highlighting the company: it had built low-income public housing. \u201cShe was connected to government money,\u201d the consultant said. \u201cHow do you answer for that?\u201d Still, he decided that it was worth the risk. \u201cI told her, in any way that\u2019s intellectually defensible, tie yourself with that company.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The consultant said that, when they\u2019d first met, Greene wasn\u2019t mentioned on Taylor Commercial\u2019s website. \u201cSo she went back and retroactively added her professional criteria there,\u201d he went on. \u201cPuffed it up.\u201d For a few years, the company listed her in filings as its C.F.O. \u201cShe may have technically been an officer in paperwork filed with the secretary of state, but she was just not involved,\u201d he told me. \u201cShe just wasn\u2019t a businessperson.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After two months or so, the consultant cut ties with Greene, who\u2019d been ignoring his guidance. He had crafted and timed a campaign announcement for her, but, days before it was scheduled, she revealed her candidacy on a radio show that was about to go off the air, blindsiding him. \u201cThere was no website live,\u201d he recalled. \u201cNo infrastructure. No media coverage. Seven people were listening. I was pissed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That December, Greene pivoted to the Fourteenth Congressional District, a conservative region of northwest Georgia. Trump had won by fifty-three points there in 2016, and Greene\u2019s paranoid pugnacity seemed like a good fit, if voters could stomach an outsider. \u201cThe conventional wisdom was that it\u2019s going to be really hard for her in northwest Georgia,\u201d McKoon told me. \u201cYou think, People are only gonna elect one of their own.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greene faced eight men in the primary, including Cowan, the neurosurgeon. But she had a financial advantage: she gave more than a million dollars to her own campaign. Cowan blew up a watermelon with an assault rifle in one ad. But Greene went further, appearing in her own advertisement holding a rifle beside images of the leftist lawmakers known as the Squad. She won. In her victory speech, wearing a bright-red dress with flared shoulders, she assailed the fake-news media, the political establishment, Antifa, B.L.M., cultural Marxists, and George Soros. Katie Dempsey, a state representative, was with Greene when Trump called to congratulate her. \u201cHe talked more than she did,\u201d Dempsey told me. \u201cShe was just smiling.\u201d In the general election, Greene took seventy-five per cent of the vote; by then, her Democratic opponent, reeling from a freshly filed divorce, had fled to his parents\u2019 home, in Indiana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eleven days later, Greene was in D.C., filming herself doing burpees on the carpeted floor of a hotel room. The pandemic was under way, and she was making a political statement against lockdown orders. \u201cIn DC, NOTHING is open bc of Democrat tyrannical control,\u201d she wrote. Commenters pointed out that multiple gyms were open nearby, including one right around the corner from her hotel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greene arrived in Congress eager to impress Trump. On Joe Biden\u2019s first full day in office, she filed an article of impeachment against him. (She later described Biden in her memoir as \u201ca criminal sitting in the White House.\u201d) She co-sponsored the English Language Unity Act, which would have made English the official language of the U.S.; the Old Glory Only Act, which would have banned the flying of Pride flags at U.S. embassies; and the Fire Fauci Act, which sought to fire Anthony Fauci. The bills captured her feelings-oriented approach to legislation. Last year, the Center for Effective Lawmaking ranked Greene the two-hundred-and-seventh most effective G.O.P. lawmaker in Congress, out of two hundred and twenty-eight. But legislating may not have been the point. This past January, she introduced the Gulf of America Act, announcing, \u201cIt\u2019s our gulf.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Trump, Greene seemed to relish trolling people, or at least the attention it elicited. In 2021, the House voted to strip her of her committee appointments, over various troubling remarks, including her skepticism that a plane crashed into the Pentagon on 9\/11. Her office subsequently put out a press release calling her \u201cone of the most talked about Republicans on Capitol Hill.\u201d The talk seemed suboptimal. The CrossFit brand formally condemned Greene for spreading \u201cloathsome and dangerous lies.\u201d (A former competitor told me, \u201cShe was always nice and pleasant. It\u2019s weird to see who she\u2019s become.\u201d) Twitter suspended her account for spreading vaccine misinformation. The next month, she attended a conference put on by the white supremacist Nick Fuentes. Mitt Romney called her a \u201ckook,\u201d and the Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger called her \u201cinsane.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Woman<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Before entering Congress, Greene, who is about five feet two, was able to deadlift three hundred pounds. In 2015, she finished sixty-second in the world among her age group at the CrossFit Games.Photograph by Scott Olson \/ Getty<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greene had backed away from QAnon early in her term. \u201cI was allowed to believe things that weren\u2019t true,\u201d she said. But she was not chastened. She soon instigated a shouting match with House Democrats, including Debbie Dingell, on the Capitol steps. \u201cI don\u2019t agree with her much, but she is not afraid to get into anybody\u2019s face to express her viewpoint,\u201d Dingell told me. Greene\u2019s approach paid off. In her first year, she raised more than seven million dollars without corporate\u00a0pac<\/em>\u00a0support. By 2022, she and Trump were discussing the possibility of her being his future running mate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scott Perry, a former chair of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, which Greene joined, praised her as \u201ca voice for regular working people.\u201d Noting Greene\u2019s fixations\u2014including, say, lewd photos that were retrieved from Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop\u2014he told me, \u201cThey might be seen as vulgar. But this is the reality of what real life is all about\u2014what the American people need to know. If you don\u2019t like it, well, you need to have a conversation with yourself about how you feel about the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greene might have seemed like a good fit for the Freedom Caucus, but she caused problems there, too. She publicly criticized Perry for initially supporting the Respect for Marriage Act, which protected same-sex marriage. She denounced Chip Roy, of Texas, for not defending those arrested for storming the Capitol on January 6th. She called Lauren Boebert, the right-wing Republican from Colorado, \u201ca little bitch\u201d on the House floor. (Referring to a scandal in which Boebert was escorted out of a musical production of \u201cBeetlejuice\u201d for inappropriate behavior, Greene later dubbed her \u201cvaping groping Lauren Boebert.\u201d) One former member of the caucus, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told me that Greene is \u201ca calculated, ambitious, manipulative person\u201d who \u201chas no limit to her dishonesty to advance her own personal agenda,\u201d which he believed was solely the pursuit of \u201cinfluence and power.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He pointed to the drawn-out vote to elect a new House Speaker, in early 2023. The Freedom Caucus had opposed Kevin McCarthy, preferring a more reliable conservative. But, on the fifteenth ballot, Greene helped to give McCarthy the post. Dingell saw Greene and Boebert arguing about this in the women\u2019s bathroom: a source told the Daily Beast<\/em> that Greene yelled at Boebert for taking millions from McCarthy and then not supporting him. (According to the book \u201cMad House,\u201d by the journalists Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater, Greene also smeared Boebert to Trump, falsely telling him prior to the 2024 election that Boebert was planning to endorse Ron DeSantis. Greene has not responded to the allegation.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greene was booted from the caucus. But, when Congress resumed under McCarthy\u2019s Speakership, she was appointed to the Homeland Security Committee and the House Oversight Committee. According to the\u00a0Times<\/em>, McCarthy told a friend, \u201cI will never leave that woman.\u201d McCarthy told me he actually said that Greene had \u201ckept her word, and I\u2019ll always keep my word to her.\u201d He said that he never promised her anything for her support. Boebert and the Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, on the other hand, had wanted favors in exchange for their votes, he said. (Neither Gaetz nor Boebert responded to requests for comment.) McCarthy came to consider Greene a good-faith actor who sometimes lacks good information. \u201cAt the beginning, she didn\u2019t like me!\u201d McCarthy told me. \u201cMark Meadows lied to her about me,\u201d he said, claiming that Meadows, Trump\u2019s former chief of staff, told Greene that McCarthy had helped to orchestrate her removal from committees in 2021. (Meadows did not respond to a request for comment.) \u201cSo she assumes certain things,\u201d McCarthy said. \u201cBut you can break through that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Trump\u2019s re\u00eblection, Greene was tapped to chair a House Oversight subcommittee tasked with implementing the recommendations of Elon Musk\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency. It had the ring of significance. In reality, the committee had little influence. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested that it was like \u201cgiving someone an unplugged controller.\u201d doge<\/em> ultimately saved less than five per cent of the two trillion dollars it aimed to cut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last April, I attended a town hall that Greene held in Acworth, Georgia. Standing onstage in a black dress, fiercely cheerful, she spoke about doge<\/em>, \u201cillegals,\u201d and the Gulf of America. As it began, a gray-haired man yelled at Greene and was dragged out by the police. He screamed as they Tased him. A disabled former marine scuffled with police; they Tased him, too, as the crowd clapped. Nine people were ultimately removed; three were arrested. \u201cThe violence of it was so chilling,\u201d Wendy Davis, a Democrat who ran to unseat Greene a few years ago, told me afterward. Worse, she said, was seeing \u201csome of my neighbors, who I\u2019d hugged moments before, cheering.\u201d This, she suggested, was \u201cMarjorie Taylor Greene\u2019s version of America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next month, Nick Dyer, Greene\u2019s longest-tenured staffer, then deputy chief of staff, left her office without offering a public explanation. The timing suggested one: she would soon begin defying Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In November, I stood outside the U.S. Capitol as Greene approached a microphone, looking frosty. \u201cI woke up this morning, and I turned to my weather app to check the temperature, and it was thirty-two degrees,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd my first thought was, Hell has froze over.\u201d D.C. was Hell, of course, and its freezing over was due to the fact that Congress finally had the votes to mandate the release of the Epstein files. Surrounded by survivors of Epstein\u2019s predations, she assailed Trump: \u201cHe called me a traitor for standing with these women.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the Epstein saga wasn\u2019t proof of the QAnon theory in its deranged specifics, it seemed to confirm the central notion: that a shadowy network of \u00e9lites had preyed on children. After Epstein died by suicide in prison, in 2019, calls grew to release all material related to his case: witness testimony, financial records, correspondence with powerful people. Greene began posting about Epstein in 2020, writing, \u201cI will do everything under my power to bring down any and ALL pedophiles.\u201d Back in 2002, Trump had called Epstein, whom he\u2019d long known, \u201ca terrific guy.\u201d In June of 2024, on Fox, he said that he\u2019d declassify the files if re\u00eblected, but suggested that they contained \u201cphony stuff.\u201d Then he\u2019d refused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Two<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Greene might have seemed like a good fit for the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. But she criticized Scott Perry, and called Lauren Boebert \u201ca little bitch\u201d on the House floor.Photograph by Tom Brenner \/ NYT \/ Redux<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greene warned that keeping the files concealed would fracture the\u00a0maga<\/em>coalition. In September, she signed on to a discharge petition, a procedural tool that would allow a vote to go forward without committee and leadership approvals. \u201cI don\u2019t know that Trump has anyone in his Cabinet that\u2019s as honest with him as Marjorie,\u201d Representative Massie, who created the petition, told me in October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Too honest, apparently. In November, Trump told reporters, \u201cI don\u2019t know what happened to Marjorie.\u201d A week later, he withdrew his support from her, writing, \u201cAll I see \u2018Wacky\u2019 Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!\u201d Greene apparently hadn\u2019t anticipated Trump\u2019s fury, which manifested, she said, in an \u201cunspeakable\u201d text to her in response to concerns she shared about her family\u2019s safety. \u201cMy sense is she was surprised that he turned on her,\u201d Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman, told me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Khanna had never known what to think about Greene. On the one hand, he\u2019d been troubled by \u201cthe Jewish-space-laser thing,\u201d a reference to her conspiracy theory about the Rothschilds. On the other, she was friendly with the Democratic congressman Jonathan Jackson, the son of the civil-rights icon Jesse Jackson, who ran for President as a left-wing populist in the eighties. The younger Jackson told me that Greene had chatted with his father during his swearing-in, and the two subsequently corresponded. He described Greene to me as \u201cvery kind to my father in his older age and illness. She reached out to FaceTime him on a few occasions. She liked how my father fought for the people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Woman<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Greene helped Kevin McCarthy win the House Speakership. \u201cI don\u2019t care what occupation you have in life,\u201d McCarthy said. \u201cWhen people know you by a three-letter acronym, you\u2019ve really built a following.\u201dPhotograph by Chip Somodevilla \/ Getty<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In July, Massie reintroduced Khanna and Greene. \u201cIn the five months we interacted, I reassessed my opinion of her,\u201d Khanna said. The three worked together to release the Epstein files. Khanna consolidated Democratic support while Massie lobbied Republicans. Greene sought Trump\u2019s backing. \u201cIn our conversations, she was never disloyal to Trump,\u201d Khanna told me. \u201cShe would keep maintaining, \u2018I don\u2019t think this thing is about Trump. I\u2019m going to convince him to do the right thing, and I think he will.\u2019\u00a0\u201d Eventually, Trump endorsed the files\u2019 release, though he didn\u2019t seem enthusiastic. \u201cI think he realized the Senate was moving,\u201d Khanna said. \u201cMassie thought we had about seventy Republican votes, and Trump saw that. Imagine seventy Republicans voting in defiance of Donald Trump\u2014that would\u2019ve been worse for him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around noon on November 18th, Greene entered the House wearing black. There were only a few other members in the chamber. She sat with Massie, Khanna, and the Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace. When her turn came, she stood to address the room. \u201cThis should have been the easiest thing for the President of the United States,\u201d she said. In the end, the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed; only one Republican opposed it. Dingell, who had engaged in the 2021 yelling match with Greene, approached her. They hugged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three days later, Greene announced her resignation from Congress, in an eleven-minute video. Sitting in front of a Christmas tree, wearing white, she said that Trump would probably have orchestrated a \u201churtful and hateful primary\u201d against her. She wrote in an accompanying letter that she\u2019d been \u201ccast aside by maga,<\/em> Inc.\u201d She told her followers, \u201cThere is no plan to save the world or 4-D chess game being played.\u201d Put in terms of her previous cosmology, there was no Q.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theories circulated about Greene\u2019s broader split with Trump. A G.O.P. source in D.C. pointed to her sudden criticism of Trump\u2019s tariff and immigration policies. \u201cIt could be her ex-husband saying, \u2018Costs are going up at the construction company and you\u2019re not going to get as big of a dividend.\u2019\u00a0\u201d As for her rebuke of Israel, he told me, \u201cI think she\u2019s fed up with there being one or two votes each month denouncing antisemitism.\u201d In fact, he added, she\u2019d said as much to members of the House leadership team. A longtime Georgia G.O.P. operative told me that he assumed her shift was the result of belatedly learning about the issues. \u201cMy theory is she\u2019s not actually a dumbass anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was also possible that her ambition had been thwarted too many times. Greene was interested in leading the Department of Homeland Security during Trump\u2019s second term\u2014and, later, in running for the Senate. Last May, the Wall Street Journal<\/em> reported that Trump had helped \u201cease\u201d Greene away from the Senate idea with a poll showing her far behind the Democratic incumbent, Jon Ossoff. \u201cShe thought she should have been considered for Vice-President, and then she thought she should be in the Cabinet,\u201d a prominent former G.O.P. official in Georgia told me. \u201cThey pissed all over the Senate race\u2014so she\u2019s not exactly felt rewarded.\u201d Debbie Dooley, the Georgia-based president of the America First Tea Party, called Greene \u201ca woman scorned.\u201d Essence Johnson, the Democratic chair of Cobb County, partly in Greene\u2019s district, said, \u201cShe\u2019s going whichever way the wind is blowing.\u201d Ossoff told me, \u201cTrump is a sinking ship. If you\u2019ve staked your identity on loyalty to Trump, there\u2019s a fast-approaching sell-by date on that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Truth Social, Trump had also threatened to support her challengers in a primary, a tactic that had pushed plenty of Republicans into retirement before. Still, Georgia\u2019s governor, Brian Kemp, and Raffensperger, its secretary of state, both opposed Trump\u2019s attempt to overturn his election loss in the state, in 2020, and were easily re\u00eblected. \u201cShe\u2019s entirely safe up there,\u201d Charles S. Bullock III, a political-science professor at the University of Georgia, said. Massie argued that attacking Greene could hurt Trump. \u201cMarjorie represents the conscience of the populist wing of the party,\u201d he said. \u201cAttacking her shrinks the tent.\u201d But, for Greene, running for re\u00eblection might have been dangerous. In mid-November, police confirmed multiple credible threats to her family\u2014which she blamed on Trump\u2019s attacks. In the wake of Charlie Kirk\u2019s killing and the firebombing of Josh Shapiro\u2019s home, there was reason for a controversial politician to exit public life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Screen<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After Greene pushed for the release of the Epstein files, in a break with Trump, he called her \u201cMarjorie Traitor Brown\u201d and threatened to support her opponents in her next primary.Photograph by Elijah Nouvelage \/ Bloomberg \/ Getty<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She certainly didn\u2019t need her congressional salary. According to filings, Greene makes a million dollars a year from her family\u2019s company and is also active in the stock market, where the value of her holdings has increased by nearly five hundred per cent since 2021. In May, the investment-research site Quiver Quantitative reported that Greene was worth around twenty-two million dollars. \u201cIf anyone can help my mom @mtgreenee locate her mysterious $22\u00a0MILLION bank account everyone keeps talking about\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. we\u2019d really appreciate it,\u201d her daughter Lauren posted on X. This month, Greene also becomes eligible for a congressional pension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greene\u2019s departure from Congress belongs to a broader fracturing of the\u00a0maga<\/em>coalition. \u201cThere\u2019s a real power vacuum, which everyone knew would happen when Trump eventually had to leave power,\u201d Rachel Blum, a political-science professor at the University of Oklahoma, told me. \u201cBut it\u2019s arriving early, and there\u2019s a real opening for someone who can step forward and clearly articulate a vision that picks up and adds to what was attractive about Trumpism.\u201d Coalitions can form around many things: isolationism, nationalism, immigration, antisemitism. Elon Musk, J. D. Vance, Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and others are all testing out variations on Trumpism. \u201cThere\u2019s a real battle to be had between the parts of the Party that still have more traditional positions and these other figures, including Greene, who is among the better spokespeople for America First,\u201d Blum said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What accounts for Greene\u2019s appeal? More than most politicians, she resembles an average voter: she has a hodgepodge of recently formed opinions that seem grounded in real belief, if not always in fact. The Georgia G.O.P. operative compared her to the President. \u201cIt\u2019s like how Trump doesn\u2019t know who fought in World War One,\u201d he told me. \u201cShe kind of came into this tabula rasa. She had no interest in politics. She obviously never studied history. And she\u2019s speaking to a lot of people who don\u2019t know history or the context of the current American policy, either.\u201d He went on, \u201cYou may think she\u2019s a moron, but she gets where people are on things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her choice of words often chafed Party leaders. In May, 2021, she tweeted, \u201cVaccinated employees get a vaccination logo just like the Nazi\u2019s forced Jewish people to wear a gold star.\u201d Kevin McCarthy criticized her for this comment at the time, leading her to retweet someone calling him a \u201cfeckless cunt.\u201d But he told me that she \u201cunderstands and listens to the base more than a lot of elected officials.\u201d He pointed to trans issues. After entering Congress, Greene put up a poster outside her office that read \u201cThere are two<\/em> genders: male & female<\/em>. \u2018Trust The Science!\u2019 \u201d Some of her Republican colleagues were more open to trans rights at the time\u2014Nancy Mace said, that year, that she \u201cstrongly support[s] L.G.B.T.Q. rights and equality\u201d\u2014but they eventually moved toward Greene\u2019s position. Mace has since used a trans slur, and Trump played on voters\u2019 transphobia to help win re\u00eblection. McCarthy described Greene to me, flatteringly, as the \u201ccanary in the coal mine\u201d of the G.O.P.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the fall, Greene laid out her \u201cAmerica First, America Only\u201d vision. It resembled the maga<\/em> platform, but with fewer foreign, corporate, or pedophilic entanglements. The G.O.P. source in D.C. recently heard from someone in the White House that she was \u201cthinking about running for President.\u201d Time<\/em> had reported similar whispers. Salon<\/em> predicted \u201cAOC vs. MTG\u201d in 2028. Greene denied the rumors. Her resignation letter did not rule out the possibility of a future White House run\u2014or a campaign for governor of Georgia, in 2026\u2014but it set a seeming prerequisite: that \u201cthe common American people finally realize and understand that the Political Industrial Complex of both parties is ripping this country apart.\u201d Meanwhile, Greene wrote, \u201cI\u2019m going back to the people I love.\u201d She also went surfing in Costa Rica, posting on Instagram about living #puravida while writing on X that she was still \u201cAmerica FIRST.\u201d In December, when heavily redacted portions of the Epstein files were released, she wrote, \u201cOnly evil people would hide this and protect those who participated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This fall, Greene cited her constituents to explain her break with Trump: during one week, she said, sixty per cent of the calls to her district office concerned health-insurance premiums costing too much, and the rest were about Epstein. Residents of the Fourteenth District span three thousand square miles of mostly rural Appalachia. Many do farm or factory work. Nearly one in three people in the town of Aragon lives below the poverty line. One evening in October, I picked up Garry Baldwin, an Aragon resident, from his little white house. A bespectacled octogenarian, Baldwin was working on a bathroom renovation when I\u2019d called, minutes earlier. \u201cLemme throw on a clean shirt,\u201d he\u2019d said cheerfully. \u201cI\u2019ll show you around.\u201d From 2016 to 2019, Baldwin was Aragon\u2019s mayor. He described the mandate of the job as \u201ckeep the place halfway safe, keep people from walking off with it.\u201d There isn\u2019t much to walk off with, he confessed: dilapidated homes, some churches, and JC\u2019s Snack Shack. Before taking on his nonpartisan mayoral duties, Baldwin was a security guard. His achievement as mayor, he told me, was \u201cWe didn\u2019t go broke. I didn\u2019t get sued.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We passed some deer grazing in the rain and a man on a porch, who, Baldwin said, \u201cstays in jail half the time.\u201d A rainbow soon framed the smokestack of a defunct cotton mill. \u201cThis town lost its identity when the mill closed and nothing replaced it,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re stepchildren out here.\u201d Greene had visited the area once that he knew of. \u201cShe shook hands, then left,\u201d he said. \u201cNo help.\u201d He didn\u2019t much like Greene, nor did his wife. \u201cBut I can\u2019t even get her to vote,\u201d he said. He didn\u2019t know what to think about Greene\u2019s resignation: \u201cI\u2019m baffled like everyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bradley Davenport, a district resident who had voted for Greene, told me, \u201cI don\u2019t like that she\u2019s leaving us. She helped the conservatives in small towns that don\u2019t have a voice.\u201d He wanted to believe that the rumors about her future political plans were true: \u201cShe may have bigger things ahead of her. I hope so.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Davenport and I met in rural Murray County, at one of Greene\u2019s final appearances as a congresswoman. She was speaking at a public hearing about the proposed construction of a waste-processing facility run by Vanguard Renewables, a portfolio company of BlackRock. Locals, like Davenport, were troubled by what it would mean for their water, air, and home values. A panel of academics and Vanguard representatives tried unsuccessfully to tamp down concerns. Then Greene stood to speak. \u201cMy office has reported seven hundred and seventy-three death threats for me,\u201d she told the crowd. \u201cAnd I drove up here in my own car with my 9-millimetre.\u201d Her constituents roared. She gestured at the expert panel: \u201cI didn\u2019t come in on a private plane like you guys did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Woman<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At a press conference, Greene stood with Epstein\u2019s victims and assailed the President, saying, \u201cHe called me a traitor for standing with these women.\u201dPhotograph by Graeme Sloan \/ Bloomberg \/ Getty<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her performance, which she later posted on X six times, was vintage M.T.G. She made ad-hominem attacks (\u201cSome of you were dumb enough to wear dress shoes with your little farmers\u2019 outfits,\u201d she told the members of the panel, who had dressed in farm-casual for the occasion); she played up her construction background (\u201cI\u2019ve been in it my entire life\u201d); she was vulgar (\u201cDon\u2019t tell us how not a single drop will never spill: that\u2019s a bunch of bullshit\u201d); she was populist (\u201cThis is what people are tired of\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. a big corporation coming in and taking advantage of a rural county\u201d); and she gestured at a conspiracy involving the young man who attempted to assassinate Trump in 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania (\u201cWe\u2019re all still wondering why Thomas Crooks, who shot Donald Trump in an ear, was on a BlackRock commercial\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll right, it\u2019s y\u2019all\u2019s turn,\u201d she concluded, turning to the crowd. \u201cGive \u2019em hell.\u201d For almost four more hours, until after 11 p<\/em>.m<\/em>., they did. But first they swarmed Greene for selfies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a lovefest for a maga<\/em> apostate. \u201cPreach it, girl!\u201d a man beside me yelled. Earlier, I\u2019d overheard him talking to one of Greene\u2019s aides about Trump\u2019s feud with her. \u201cSometimes I think he should just shut his mouth,\u201d the man said. Cyndie Roberson, a retired nurse, listened as the crowd begged Greene, \u201cDon\u2019t leave us!\u201d Roberson is a moderate Republican who had long considered Greene \u201cway too extreme.\u201d Not anymore. \u201cMy husband and I said to each other, \u2018Who would think that we\u2019d fall in love with Marjorie Taylor Greene?\u2019 \u201d Roberson said. \u201cIf she runs for office again, we\u2019ll vote for her.\u201d \u2666<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The congresswoman split with the President over the Epstein files, then she quit. Where will she go from here? By Charles Bethea, January 12, 2026 Kevin McCarthy, the former Speaker of the House, believes that Greene is uniquely in touch with the\u00a0maga\u00a0base, calling her the \u201ccanary in the coal mine\u201d of the G.O.P. Photograph by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17617"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17617"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17619,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17617\/revisions\/17619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}