OPINION:
Marjorie Taylor Greene was a bona fide Trump sycophant until she decided to leave office and go scorched-earth on the president.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a politician in possession of a secure pension must finally be in want of honesty. It’s an age-old Washington tradition: You lie, you scheme, you toe the party line until your knuckles turn white, and then — the moment you decide to quit — you suddenly develop a conscience.
Enter Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The firebrand representative from Georgia, once the MAGA movement’s most enthusiastic cheerleader, has decided to burn down the house on her way out. She’s leaving Congress on Jan. 5, conveniently just two days after her federal pension vests (because why leave money on the table when you’ve already turned a $700,000 net worth into a cool $25 million during your tenure?). But before she goes, she’s decided to tell us what she really thinks about the man she once worshipped.
Apparently, the aesthetic at the winter White House wasn’t quite to Ms. Greene’s taste. In a recent interview, she confessed she “never liked the MAGA Mar-a-Lago sexualization.”
“I have two daughters, and I’ve always been uncomfortable with how those women puff up their lips and enlarge their breasts,” she told The New York Times, sounding less like a political ally and more like a concerned mother at a PTA meeting. It seems the plastic-fantastic vibe of Mr. Trump’s inner circle was a bridge too far for Ms. Greene’s “matured” sensibilities.
But the critiques get darker than just bad cosmetic surgery. Ms. Greene alleges that the president explicitly told her to keep a lid on the Jeffrey Epstein client list. Why? Because, according to Mr. Trump, “My friends will get hurt.”
Nothing says “drain the swamp” like protecting your buddies from being outed in sex trafficking documents, right? Ms. Greene claims that after she promised to identify abusers, Mr. Trump yelled at her so loudly that her entire office could hear it. “Unfortunately, it has all come down to the Epstein files,” she told CNN, standing firm on her refusal to apologize for wanting transparency. It’s a bold pivot from someone who once speculated about Jewish space lasers, but hey, personal growth is personal growth.
Ms. Greene didn’t stop at policy or personnel; she went straight for the soul. She recounted a moment at Charlie Kirk’s funeral where Mr. Trump mocked Kirk for rejecting political hatred, stating, “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want what’s best for them.”
For Ms. Greene, this was the final straw. “That was absolutely the worst statement,” she said. Noting the contrast between the Bible-thumping widow, Erika Kirk, and Mr. Trump, she said: “It just shows where his heart is. And that’s the difference, with her having a sincere Christian faith and proves that he does not have any faith.”
Ouch. Accusing the idol of the religious right of being godless is a special kind of bridge-burning.
Perhaps the most amusing part of Ms. Greene’s farewell tour is her claim of innocence. “I was just so naive and outside of politics that it was easy for me to naively believe [in him],” she lamented.
It’s a touching sentiment, isn’t it? The idea that a 51-year-old woman who ascended to one of the highest offices in the land was simply a babe in the woods, bamboozled by a reality TV star. Or maybe, just maybe, the realization that Mr. Trump isn’t a “man of the people” hit home only once he started attacking her personally.
In her New York Times interview, she did have one profound point of self-inspection. “Everyone’s like, ‘She’s changed,’” Ms. Greene said. “I haven’t changed my views. But I’ve matured. I’ve developed depth. I’ve learned Washington, and I’ve come to understand the brokenness of the place. If none of us is learning lessons here and we can’t evolve and mature with our lessons, then what kind of people are we?”
So, as MTG packs her bags and prepares to enjoy her lifetime health care and taxpayer-funded pension, we are left with her final gift: the unvarnished, snarky truth. It’s just a shame it takes a resignation letter to get it.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at josephcurl@gmail.com and on Twitter @josephcurl.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.