Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) insists she hasn’t changed, but divisions within her party on everything between conservative firebrands are deepening. from jeffrey epstein To health care subsidies Bothering and harassing his fellow Republicans.
Greene made her political mark as a staunch Trump loyalist in Congress, defending the president and the protesters on January 6, 2021, and attacking Democrats at every turn.
But with Trump’s return to the White House, Greene has placed herself on an island contrary to many of the president’s positions and, to some extent, among Republicans.
In a phone interview for this story, Greene said she is not among those who have changed, pointing to her criticism of congressional Republicans in her first 2020 campaign and lack of action on health care.
“I’m 100 percent the same person today as I was when I ran for Congress,” Greene said.
Greene said it is “ridiculous” to say that her positions have put her on an island in the GOP. “I’m really representing what a lot of Americans fully support.”
“My job title is not cheerleader for Republicans in Congress. I’m not talking about the President. I’m talking about Republicans in Congress. And Republicans in Congress are the ones who need to come up with a plan to fix health insurance,” she later said.
Yet several of Greene’s House GOP colleagues and GOP sources told The Hill they are more disappointed than ever with Greene’s positions, and wish she would pursue a different strategy to achieve her goals.
“Whether it’s Gaza, whether it’s Epstein, or whether it’s the ACA now [Affordable Care Act] To her credit, she’s been 180 degrees the opposite of Trump,” fumed one House Republican. “In fact, she has been more Biden than Trump.”
Green criticized Israel’s actions in Gaza over the summer as “genocideShe was one of just four Republicans to sign the discharge petition calling for the release of files related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in defiance of the White House’s wishes. Last week, she went against GOP leaders’ shutdown message by expressing concern over the expiration of the ObamaCare tax credit, which could double insurance premiums for millions of people, saying Republicans have There are no plans to address the issue.
He spoke of more of a break with Republicans and Trump in a media blitz last week — including a surprise criticism of the Trump administration’s mass deportations, while noting his experience owning a construction company.
“We need to do something about labor and come up with a better plan than rounding up every single person and deporting them just like that,” Greene said on an episode of The Tim Dillon Show. podcast Released over the weekend. “I’m going to push back on that, but I’m just living in reality from here.”
Breaking from their pattern of villainizing Greene, Democrats are praising her health care stance. OnePress releaseA spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said simply: “Marjorie Taylor Greene is right.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) shows a screenshot of his social media post at a press conference.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) downplayed Greene’s concerns at a press conference last week.
“Congresswoman Greene doesn’t serve on jurisdictional committees that deal with those particular issues and she probably isn’t read about some of them,” Johnson said.
Greene shrugged off the disappointment of her colleagues, who expected her to perform better as a team player in the GOP trifecta.
Greene argued, pointing to calls to his office that day about his health care stance, “This frustration toward me only exists in this political bubble: Of the 224 calls, 175 were in support and 40 were in opposition, she said.
Green says she is a staunch Trump supportertold NBC NewsShe is not the President’s “blind slave.” But he declined to say whether he had recently spoken to President Trump.
“I don’t talk about my relationship with my mother and how often I talk to her, and I don’t talk about how often I talk to my kids and what days I talk to them,” Green told The Hill. “I don’t have to explain it. You won’t hear me running out and saying, ‘I talked to the president today.'”
Green didMentionThe concerns were conveyed to Trump over the phone during an appearance on Steve Bannon’s War Room earlier this month.
However, she has been open about her disputes with the president’s aides and advisers – often saying she is receiving bad advice or misinformation when Trump differs from her on an issue.
After an unnamed White House official circulated a statement warning the press that signing a discharge petition to vote to release the Epstein files would be “seen as a very hostile act to the administration”, Greene said in a Real America Voice interview that whoever said so was a “coward” for attacking members like her who defended Trump after January 6.
Greene was also discouraged from running for Senate by Trump supporters, with the Wall Street Journal reporting in May that Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio had conducted a poll that showed she trailed Senator Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) by double digits. greenSaidAt the time she “wanted nothing to do with the Senate”, criticizing advisers and aides who leaked surveys and private conversations, saying they were working against her because they were not on her payroll.
Emphasizing the sentiment that she is not a team player or working against the president, Greene pointed to her votes for “a big beautiful bill” of Trump’s tax cuts and Medicaid reforms and the GOP Continuing Resolution (CR) stopgap funding measures.
“I’ve voted for team party bills that I didn’t necessarily like. Didn’t like them. I wasn’t big on a big issue — I thought there were some things I really liked, but there were other things I didn’t like,” Green told The Hill. “I never want to vote for another CR, they make me vomit, but I voted for two CRs this year. I’m supporting the President by voting for one CR. That’s what he wanted.”
Green said, “And so I don’t understand how they criticize me for standing up and saying — what I’ve always said — health insurance is crushing Americans, and we have to do something about it.”
She made a surprise announcement at a House GOP political meeting last month that she would transfer $240,000, a huge sum, to the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Many of Greene’s recent departures from Trump and other Republicans come in the months after her longtime spokesman and deputy chief of staff Nick Dyer left her office in May. Dyer was widely known in the press corps and on Capitol Hill, leading him to join The Hill’s 2024 notable staffers.List,
Green said the personnel change has not affected his message. “I always wrote my own tweets. I always did my own communications.”
Dyer told The Hill: “It was an honor to work for Congresswoman Greene as she led the fight to reshape Congress and put America first. I’m proud of what we accomplished in just a few short years.”
Another longtime aide who has run Greene’s political operations since her first 2020 campaign, Isaiah Wortman, left her team after the 2024 election to join the White House as special assistant to the president for personnel.
Even though Greene has repeatedly ruffled feathers over the years, Republican leaders have extended olive branches, trying to harness her star power.
Instead of banishing her as a conspiracy theorist and a pariah, then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) brought Greene on board early in her congressional career, legitimizing this flamboyant image. Their alliance helped Greene oust McCarthy’s critics in the House Freedom Caucus.
Greene’s endorsement did little to protect her from being ousted by a contingent of other GOP firebrands. But after initially clashing with Johnson and making an unsuccessful move to oust him after pushing Ukraine funding through Congress, Greene seemed to be retracing the opponent-turned-establishment ally path.
After a “grower”meetingWith Johnson following the 2024 election, news broke that Greene would chair the “DOGE” subcommittee under the House Oversight Committee – and Greene later endorsed Johnson for speaker.
He publicly indicated high ambitionsThinkingAbout to become Secretary of Homeland Security before Trump nominated Kristi Noem for that role.
Nevertheless, he held hearings on defunding PBS and NPR, and Congress later approved the White House’s request to defund the public broadcasters. The House passed two of his bills: one to officially rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Mexico, and the other to require DHS to publish a monthly report on foreigners who pose a security risk attempting to enter the US.
His Protect Children’s Innocence Act, a bill he led for years to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth, died out of the House Judiciary Committee this year. While the Justice Department sent last month andsupportedA separate bill led by freshman Rep. Bob Onder (R-Mo.) aims to codify Trump’s executive order on gender-affirming care for minors, Greene said, adding that she has a commitment that her own legislation will get a floor vote.
But leaders can hope that Green will have no shortage of critics. Johnson told Fox News Sunday In recent days he had a “thoughtful” conversation with Greene in the wake of her latest health care criticisms.
And those high expectations for Republicans are at the core of Greene’s politics.
“I’m fed up with Republicans in Congress not passing the agenda, not doing what they’re supposed to do, not controlling the way they campaign,” Greene said.
