Nothing lasts forever: Trump-Marjorie Taylor Greene union was bound to end
The planet spins on its axis at 1,038 mph, orbiting a giant ball of plasma at 67,000 mph tilting to and fro. We have begun the tilt away from the sun with the days growing shorter.
The leaves are changing colors and falling. Nothing lasts forever, including the summer season, President Donald Trump’s presidency and the love between Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Rome.
As the leaves turn orange and red, the congresswoman has turned from MAGA red to progressive blue.
In the past month, she has assailed the president’s foreign interventions; demanded extensions of Obamacare subsidies she once campaigned against; decried the mass deportations she once supported; blasted Republicans instead of Democrats for the shutdown; been treated respectfully by CNN; and even got the progressive women of “The View” to sing her praises, with co-host Sunny Hostin saying, “I’m sitting here just stumped, you know, because you are a very different person than I thought. You’ve gone so right, it’s like you’re on the left now.”
Trump is blasting Greene as “wacky Marjorie,” which hints at the president being off his game. Surely there is a better nickname.
Greene sees reality more clearly than Trump. He has three more years in Washington and then will be gone. All populist movements crack up when the charismatic leader of the movement fades away. Populism comes with a sell-by date premised on the lame duck status or death of its leader. Greene will outlast Trump if she plays her cards right and she is now looking at the hand she has been dealt.
Greene seems to have become bored with her constituents
The 14th Congressional District of Georgia runs from the Atlanta suburbs of West Cobb and Paulding County up and round to Rome, heads north to Dade County, then cuts back over to Dalton and I-75.
My radio show is on the two most listened to talk stations in her district and I hear a lot about Marjorie — complaints about my complaints about her and complaints from the business community that they must rely on Reps. Barry Loudermilk, R-District 11, and Richard McCormick, R-District 7, for constituent services.
Greene is very good at being seen on “The View” and MAGA-adjacent podcasts. Her constituents just do not often see her helping them. She is bigger than them. She seems bored with them, too.
Out on Kingston Highway between Rome and Kingston, and the back roads that lead from Rome to Adairsville, there are Marjorie Taylor Greene signs and Trump signs, as if conjoined twins, in yards. Rarely is there a Greene sign without a Trump sign. But there are MAGA signs without Marjorie. She is in search of a solution for her permanence in an impermanent world where Trump’s star is fading thanks to the 22nd Amendment.
Greene started as a right-of-center candidate in the 6th Congressional District, challenging Karen Handel in the Republican primary in 2020. She was more MAGA, but not that MAGA. She was more focused on the district, she claimed, than Handel who, Greene claimed, was too focused on Washington.
Then, District 14 Republican Rep. Tom Graves retired, Greene headed to Rome and she embraced the Trump agenda, the MAGA brand and conspiracy theories that critics coined “space lasers.”
Trump loved her, endorsed her, and the love of his voters transferred to her. Her marital and personal issues made no difference, neither did her poor constituent service. She was a MAGA proxy.
Trump dissuaded MTG from higher office because she can’t win
But what is MAGA now? Greene has embraced the isolationist part of MAGA. She wants no foreign involvement at all. She opposes not just helping Ukraine but any assistance to Israel.
She opposed the president’s successful strikes on Iran. She opposed his involvement in getting the Israeli and American hostages returned. Trump has gotten multiple nations that hate each other to resolve their differences and Greene sees no need for American leadership.
She says she is “America First and America Only.” It is the luxury of the naive to think the world does not need American leadership. It is also why the Russian and Chinese press love her.
Trump and Greene were always going to have a political divorce. The reality of the role of the president and leading the free world collides with the isolationist ignorance Greene preaches. She can stake out her new positions, never having to grapple with the consequences of implementing them.
Trump, realizing Greene is more and more adrift from him, pushed her not to run for either governor or senator in Georgia, knowing she cannot win.
Greene is bored of being one of 435 members of the House of Representatives. She wants more.
She has been willing to serve as ice in the cracks of MAGA, breaking open her own path and trying to claim a portion of MAGA for herself. The question now is if she can do it.
Vice President JD Vance seems more adept at the politics Greene now embraces. Trump is still president for three years and can stifle some of Greene’s access to MAGA-adjacent influencers.
Her embrace of the antisemitic wing of MAGA will push her politics further left as much of the right is rallying again to shut out the antisemites around them. Trump, too, will work to find some single person to primary her for a role she cares less and less about.
Forced to choose between Trump and “The View’s” new favorite Republican, Greene’s constituents might be open to a change. We could be just a few years away from Greene joining former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., on a boat to Gaza with former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke or, more likely, watching her grow her podcast following.
That seems to be where those Trump turns on go for rehab. If Greene learns one lesson from this, it should be that it is much harder to go from insane to reasonable with an “R” next to your name and keep your social media clout.
Erick Erickson is host of the nationally syndicated “Erick Erickson Show,” heard weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. on WSB Radio. He is also now a contributor to the AJC.
