Oct. 30, 2025, 6:02 p.m.
Marjorie Taylor Greene sounds like a Democrat these days. Almost.
The far-right firebrand has distanced herself from the Trump administration on an increasing number of issues, a sharp departure for the Georgia Republican who has had the ear of the president for years and has long been notorious for her inflammatory rhetoric targeting Democrats.
Greene recently called for Congress to end one of the longest shutdowns ever by negotiating with Democrats on their demand to extend Affordable Care Act tax credits. She has also broken with the administration in demanding the release of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, criticizing Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, and assailing the Trump administration's $40 billion bailout of Argentina.
“Washington D.C. is absolutely unchangeable, and they have hijacked our movement, and they’re taking it away from the campaign promises of America First and turning it into everything that we hate,” Greene said on conservative commentator Tucker Carlson’s online show last week.
Greene, who has represented her conservative northern Georgia district since 2021, has cast herself as a bona fide “America First” lawmaker. For her, that now means separating herself from GOP congressional leadership—and even the White House—on recent issues in which she says Republicans have failed to live up to their campaign promises.
Andra Gillespie, associate professor of political science at Atlanta’s Emory University, notes that while Greene still votes with Republicans the vast majority of the time, her breaks with the party solidify her status as an outsider to followers beyond Georgia’s 14th District.
“She’s being a good delegate in her view,” Gillespie said. “And I think that she also knows that she has a following. And because she has this following, she’s perceived as being independent of the president and independent of [House Speaker] Mike Johnson. She feels that she has the latitude to be able to pivot and spar and not be viewed as being disloyal.”
Greene has hit the media circuit in October, talking to MAGA media, new media, and mainstream outlets to stake her opposition not only to her leadership’s shutdown strategy but to White House policies as well. One of Trump’s biggest backers in Congress, Greene has been careful not to criticize Trump personally, but she has navigated a more populist position than the White House on several issues.
“I’ve been here in Washington all week, and I’ve been at my office, I’ve been in the Capitol, and there’s two things I couldn’t find this week,” Greene said earlier this month on podcaster and comedian Tim Dillon’s show. “I couldn’t find anywhere the Epstein files, and I also couldn’t find the Republican plan to fix the absolutely destroyed health insurance industry that got wiped out in 2015 with Obamacare.”
Greene’s divergence from the White House on a handful of issues comes after she was rebuffed from seeking higher office.
Greene has opted not to run for Georgia governor or take on incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff next year. But her decision to sit out the Senate race may not have been totally voluntary. The Wall Street Journal reported in May that Trump worked to dissuade Greene from running for statewide office, supplying her with polling showing she would lose by as much as 18 points.
Now she’s been using lengthy X posts to lay out a new political perch, blasting the “good ol’ boy system” in Georgia and saying she is “carving her own lane” politically. Greene has said she likely won’t endorse Republican candidates in either the Senate or governor’s race.
“I’m a pretty good bellwether, because if I’m not inspired then a lot of other people are not inspired,” Greene said of GOP candidates on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Politically Georgia podcast in September.
Her attacks on Republicans follow years of spouting QAnon-fueled conspiracy theories and harassing Democrats.
She blamed “lasers” for the California wildfires in 2018 and tied them to the Rothschilds, a wealthy Jewish family often linked to antisemitic conspiracy theories. She questioned whether a plane really hit the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, and accused President Obama of being a Muslim. She dismissed the 2018 massacre of students in Parkland, Florida, as a “false flag” and confronted shooting survivor David Hogg while he was on Capitol Hill the following year advocating for gun control.
In 2021, House Democrats joined with nearly a dozen Republicans to strip her of committee assignments for her incendiary comments and statements perceived by some as threatening to Democrats.
But as the government shutdown has dragged on, Greene is using social media to level broadsides against her own conference.
In a lengthy post last week, she criticized House GOP leadership’s decision to keep members in their districts as the Senate considers the House-passed stopgap spending bill, as well as their opposition to extending the Affordable Care Act premium subsidies that Democrats are demanding (although she still made sure to direct some venom toward Democrats for passing the law in the first place).
“Democrats created this nightmare 15 years ago, then made it worse in 2021 by extending the ACA tax credits that are now expiring,” Greene said. “And I find it unacceptable that Republicans are sitting on the sidelines doing nothing to fix this health care disaster that is leading many Americans into financial ruin.”
On a conference call with House Republicans Tuesday, Greene criticized the party’s lack of a plan to address the looming subsidy deadline, as she later confirmed on social media.
“Johnson said he’s got ideas and pages of policy ideas and committees of jurisdiction are working on it, but he refused to give one policy proposal to our GOP conference on our own conference call,” she wrote.
Greene has also spoken out against the Trump administration’s decision to bail out Argentina. The White House has committed to provide as much as $40 billion to the South American country, led by Trump ally Javier Milei. The administration also rankled U.S. ranchers by calling for an increase in Argentine beef imports.
“I have no idea who is telling our great president, our ‘America First’ president, that this is a good idea,” Greene said on Carlson’s show. “Because, honestly, it’s a punch in the gut to all of our American cattle ranchers, and they are furious, and rightfully so.”
Johnson has largely brushed off Greene’s criticisms, telling CNN last Friday, “Well, bless her heart, that’s an absurd statement.”
The speaker has repeatedly said he won’t bring back the House until the Senate votes to reopen the government.
Other Republicans have shown a hint of frustration at Greene’s intra-party attacks, while still treading lightly.
“My advice is don’t spend much time worrying about what Marjorie is saying,” Sen. Ted Cruz told CNBC’s Squawk Box Wednesday.
Greene shows no signs of backing down, though. On Tuesday, she’s set to make an appearance on ABC’s The View, one of the most left-leaning platforms on network television.
