When the White House discouraged Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from launching a Senate bid in Georgia this spring, Greene — a longtime loyal ally of President Donald Trump — agreed to back off her statewide ambitions.
But that didn’t mean the firebrand Republican was going to back down from other fights she felt were worth waging — including, or perhaps especially, with her own party.
Over the past six months, Greene has made waves in Washington for publicly breaking with Trump and the GOP on a number of high-profile issues and lobbing some pointed attacks at her fellow Republicans in the process. She was critical of the Trump administration’s strikes on Iran, referred to the situation in Gaza as a “genocide,” signed her name to an effort to force a House vote to require the Justice Department to release its files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case and, most recently, sided with Democrats in calling for an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies amid the government shutdown fight.
“I’m not some sort of blind slave to the president, and I don’t think anyone should be,” Greene said in an interview. “I serve in Congress. We’re a separate branch of the government, and I’m not elected by the president. I’m not elected by anyone that works in the White House. I’m elected by my district. That’s who I work for, and I got elected without the president’s endorsement, and, you know, I think that has served me really well.”
Greene won her first House primary in Georgia in 2020 without Trump’s endorsement before she received his support in the general election in her deep-red district.
“So I get to be independent as a Republican,” she added, “and I think what helps [Trump] the most is when he has people that are willing to be honest with him and not just tell him what they think he wants to hear.”
Greene denies that her statewide ambitions’ being dashed has anything to do with her recent independent streak, saying that has always been her brand. She also slammed the Republican-led Senate, insisting she was never all that interested in serving there anyway, even though she had publicly talked about her desire to run.
“I don’t want to serve in that institution. Look at them. They’re literally the reason why the government is shut down right now,” Greene said. “I think all good things go to die in the Senate, and I certainly don’t want to go there. But I think those are just attacks to try to marginalize me or try to sweep me off, so to speak. And I really don’t care.”
While Greene has been a solo operator in the past, her recent behavior has surprised even some people who are close to her. She tried on the role of “team player” for a while, especially when former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was in charge. But she has grown increasingly disillusioned with politics and her own party, and she felt especially burned after the White House talked her out of running for the Senate, according to four Republican sources familiar with the matter.
One of those sources, who is close to Greene — who openly expressed interest in becoming homeland security secretary — said she was also disappointed she didn’t get a job in the Trump administration. Another one of the sources, who is also close to Greene and spoke to her recently, added that she has felt “ignored” by GOP leadership and the White House.
If Greene’s intentions were to get Trump’s attention, it appears to have worked. In recent months, he called at least two senior Republicans to ask, “What’s going on with Marjorie?” according to two GOP sources with direct knowledge of the conversations.
Greene, who is arguably more in tune with the MAGA base than any other member of Congress, says she still supports Trump and maintains close ties with him. But her relationship with his staff is a different story.
The White House has unsuccessfully tried to pressure Greene to remove her name from the Epstein discharge petition. Greene was particularly incensed when she read an anonymous White House official told reporters that supporting the petition would be seen as a “hostile act.” She then went on Real America’s Voice and called that official a “coward.”
In what some Republicans viewed as another sign of Greene’s shifting attitude toward the political scene, she was invited last month to attend the grand opening of Trump’s “Rose Garden Club” at the White House, but she turned it down, according to a source familiar with the matter. It was the type of exclusive Trump event that Greene would normally have cleared her schedule to attend. Her office said she was under the weather.
Greene also has a strained relationship with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., whom she feels zero loyalty to and tried unsuccessfully to remove from his post last year over his support for Ukraine aid.
Unlike McCarthy, who strategically brought Greene into the fold so he could better control her behavior, Johnson hasn’t made the same overtures. Greene was a pariah when she first came to Congress for her incendiary rhetoric, so she was eager to prove herself and play the inside game. But now, she is increasingly embracing her outsider status.
“I didn’t run for Congress as an establishment Republican, and when I ran for Congress, I’d never even been to a GOP meeting. So I didn’t come up through the ranks,” Greene said. “And I think a lot of people don’t understand that. I’m very much an average American. I don’t see things through the party polls and the talking points; I look at the real problems and analyze them that way. … So I think that helps me have a different viewpoint.”
In calling for an extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies, Greene cited her own children as an example of how people are going to be hurt if Republicans let them lapse. Greene said she was “disgusted” by the prospect even though she doesn’t like the underlying law, and she criticized GOP leadership for not having a plan to address it.
Democrats were quick to seize on her comments to bolster their argument. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., cited them on the Senate floor, while House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., even put her social media post about the topic on a poster board and took it to a news conference.
At his own news conference Tuesday, Johnson dismissed Greene’s criticism of the party’s approach on Obamacare subsidies, arguing she isn’t informed about the topic.
“Congresswoman Greene does not serve on the committees of jurisdiction that deal with that, those specialized issues, and she’s probably not read in on some of that,” he said.
But Greene hasn’t budged in the face of criticism from party leadership.
“The reality is they never talk about it, and that committee working on, say, health insurance and the industry, that doesn’t happen in a [secure facility]; it’s not a major secret,” Greene said, adding that Johnson has yet to reach out to her to discuss her concerns.
“What I am upset over is my party has no solution,” she said. “It’s not something that we talk about frequently, but it is a reality for Americans, and it’s something that I don’t think we can ignore. I want, I really want to fix it.”
Now that she has given up on running for the Senate next year and was passed over for a Trump administration job, it’s unclear what’s in store for Greene’s political future. She raised $1.3 million in the first six months of the year, slightly less than the $1.9 million she had brought in at the same point in 2023, and she has only $641,000 cash on hand.
Asked whether she’s committed to running for re-election in the House next year, Greene said: “Oh, certainly. I haven’t made any things like that. I don’t, honestly, I don’t even think about it. Right now, I’m just like, damn it, why aren’t we back at work?”
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