|
 |
Welcome back to False Flag! Do you remember way back in 2017 when Laura Loomer insinuated that a liberal had slashed her tires, only for the culprit to turn out to be dry rot?
This is deep Loomer lore. But it was one of many moments I got to reminisce about with two other veterans of the right-wing media beat, Jared Holt and Michael Edison Hayden, on their “Posting Through It” podcast. It was a wonderful, epic breakdown of Loomer’s career: the highs, the lows, and her latest gig as a powerful outside Trump adviser. You can find it on any podcast app or here on YouTube.
Today, I want to talk about a Loomer foe who’s taking a very different stance on the president’s second term. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is increasingly carving a political path for herself away from Trumpism. It’s making a lot of people mad. And it’s raising a question that I’m also trying to answer: What’s her endgame? Continue on to find out. And become a Bulwark+ subscriber to support this mission:
–Will
What Is Going on Inside Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Brain?!
The Georgia congresswoman has been increasingly restless with Trump. What does it mean for MAGA’s future?
|
| |||||||||||||||
 |
AT THE START OF THIS YEAR, it would have been hard to name a more stalwart Donald Trump supporter than Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. But the firebrand Georgia Republican with previously unquestionable MAGA credentials and a knack for spouting off zany shit has been breaking with the movement an awful lot over the past week.
Greene has offered stinging criticisms of the Trump administration’s handling of deportations, the Epstein files, and tariffs. Most crucially, she slammed Republicans’ negotiations on the government shutdown, saying her party needs to compromise with Democrats to prevent Obamacare subsidies from expiring.
“I’m not willing to be a cheerleader,” Greene said of her turn against Trump on podcaster Tim Dillon’s show.
Months before this latest turn, Greene had also grown critical of the Republican party for its lockstep support for Israel. But this round of heterodoxies has felt bigger, and different. Her criticism of Trump has gotten so loud, and the stakes from the shutdown are so high, that it has prompted a real response from MAGA media. Not just that, she’s lobbing her attacks from what is considered enemy terrain, with recent interviews on CNN and NBC and with the New York Times.
“What the hell are you doing, Marjorie?” asked conservative website Townhall.
“Sellout fraud,” groaned MAGA thought leader “Catturd” on X.
Other conservative influencers have sought to cast Greene in a sort of Nancy Pelosi mold, criticizing her wealth since entering office and suggesting that she’s just an out-of-touch Democrat.
“MTG is sounding like a wealthy white Napa liberal,” wrote conservative media personality Will Chamberlain.
It’s hard to know what’s going on inside Greene’s head—we’re talking, after all, about a one-time hardcore QAnon believer who posited that forest fires are caused by space lasers controlled by the Rothschilds. But Greene’s efforts to distance herself from unpopular Trump initiatives does give us a glimpse into what the post-Trump Republican party could look like.
Greene’s most telling clash with Republicans has come over the expiring enhanced subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. Greene has been vocal about her own adult daughter’s prospective insurance increases if Congress lets the policy lapse. But she’s making the case from, ostensibly, the populist right. On Monday, she called out House Speaker Mike Johnson for saying that full Obamacare repeal was off the table, saying it was an “unacceptable” position.
In the same way that influential pro-Trump podcaster Steve Bannon has opposed cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid, Greene has recognized—I think savvily—that issues like rising insurance costs could sink the popularity of other Trump agenda items like an immigration crackdown. Trump’s own pollsters have said the same.
Greene is an avowed believer in “real” Trumpism: no more wars, an isolationist “America First” foreign policy, and little concern about pre-Trump Republicans’ agenda items for fiscal responsibility. And the fact that she—one of the most internet-addled members of the House—is insisting that current Trumpism has strayed from those roots is stinging others just a little more. It infuriated right-wing activist Laura Loomer, a longtime Greene foe who has clashed with her for years over both Americ