How Marjorie Taylor Greene went from Trump ally to quitting Congress

Marjorie Taylor Greene entered Congress as one of Donald Trump’s staunchest defenders.

Greene was sworn in just days before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, where he supported the president and echoed his contention that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” at a time when many in the Republican Party rejected his views.

Now, five years later, Greene is leaving Congress, branded a “traitor” by the man she once respected.

In just a few months, Greene broke with Trump in the most dramatic way possible.

While Green criticized Trump earlier this year for his decision to launch air strikes against Iran, his support for Israel during the Gaza war and the lack of adequate regulation of big tech companies, The final rupture began with Jeffrey EpsteinDeceased financier and convicted pedophile with links to the rich and powerful.

She decried Trump’s reluctance to order the Justice Department to fully release documents from the case and appeared alongside Epstein’s victims and Democrats to force a House vote on the matter.

But things didn’t end there.

Greene will also question Republican tactics during the recent government shutdown, siding with Democrats in calling on her party to address expiring health care subsidies for low-income Americans.

She publicly criticized Trump for placing too much emphasis on foreign policy at the expense of economic and affordability issues.

“The American people are not motivated by foreign wars or bailouts of other countries,” she wrote on X earlier this month. “They want their leaders to show up, do their job, and fight for them every day!”

Greene continues to insist she supports Trump, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that her views on the America First movement differ from the US president’s.

An activist-turned-congresswoman who became famous for her opposition to the political establishment now finds that the Make America Great Again movement she championed has become the establishment.

With the center of Trump’s power focused on her removal from office—she Say goodbye several times and rush to the exit.

“I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’ and hope this will pass and get better,” she said in her resignation statement.

“If I am abandoned by MAGA and replaced by neoconservatives, Big Pharma, Big Tech, the military-industrial war complex, foreign leaders, and an elite donor class that has no connection even with real Americans, then many ordinary Americans will be abandoned and replaced as well.”

Throughout her career, she often embraced controversy and found herself in conflict.

She is a fitness trainer in Georgia who got involved in politics in 2016 as Trump began his successful bid for the White House. She frequently traveled to Washington, D.C., where she would denounce Democratic members of Congress for their socialist and pro-Islam policies.

She has promoted baseless “QAnon” conspiracy theories, questioned whether U.S. school shootings are “staged” and claimed that the Democratic Party is secretly run by a powerful group of pedophiles.

Once in Congress, she clashed with Democrats and members of her own party. House vote comes despite her backing off from some of her past conspiracy views Remove her from committee assignments Shortly after she took office.

She enjoyed something of a political resurgence when Republicans returned to power in Congress, working with then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to solidify conservative support in the House. When McCarthy was ousted, Greene fought with his successor, Mike Johnson, and launched an unsuccessful campaign to oust McCarthy.

In 2023, she was fired from the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

She has become a political wild card — still despised by many on the left but also viewed with suspicion by conservatives. She remains close to Trump, giving her influence in Washington.

Then she didn’t.

In a brief interview Friday night, Trump told ABC News that Greene’s departure from Congress is “good news for the country.”

He later posted on Truth Social that Greene had “gone terrible” but that he was “eternally grateful to Marjorie and for her service to our country.”

Green said she will return home to Georgia to start a “new path.” Although she has reportedly expressed interest in running for governor next year, she recently said she would not seek the position or seek to unseat incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff.

However, her decision to resign on January 5 made it possible that she would change her mind and run for office in a state where Republican politicians such as current Georgia Governor Brian Kemp have shown that it is possible to win an election even without Trump’s support.

The move also repositions Greene politically as Republicans grapple with an environment in which public support for Trump — especially his handling of the economy — appears to be deteriorating and a president who is constitutionally bound to never be on the ballot again.

Greene, 51, may be nearing the end of her term in Congress, but her involvement in American political life may be far from over.