Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., resigned from Congress on Monday, following a falling out with President Donald Trump and an apparent revelation that Washington is tainted by “toxic politics.” In the weeks preceding her departure, Greene offered vague public apologies for her contributions to a vicious political culture and has been telling a story of an apparent recent moral evolution. But her exit from public office is not an honorable one. She hasn’t substantively atoned for the way she helped shape that toxic culture, and she fled politics as soon as the going got tough.
Greene broke with Trump on a variety of policy issues in 2025. She opposed his refusal to extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. She tried to block GOP-backed aid to Israel and Ukraine, and she criticized Trump’s strikes on Iran. She cooled on his tariff strategy. She said she no longer believed in the QAnon conspiracy theory. And then the biggest and final blow was her siding with Democrats who were calling for Trump to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, which Trump didn’t want to do even as his base was demanding it.
Greene gave up her attempt to separate MAGA from the cult of Trump as soon as he turned on her.
Trump lashed out in mid-November by calling her “Marjorie Traitor Greene,” siccing his followers on her, and announcing he would support primary challengers against her. She said she and her family were harassed and received death threats. Within days, Greene folded, saying she would resign from Congress in January.
My hypothesis right before the falling out this autumn, amid reporting that she had 2028 White House aspirations, was that Greene was seeking to carve out a more politically palatable and ideologically disciplined form of right-wing nationalism than Trump has pursued. A discipline that, among other things, would include avoiding meddling in other countries’ affairs, moderation on cutting social services and seeking to shed light on a real-life sex trafficking conspiracy. Greene remains a reactionary radical, but I could see a somewhat coherent emerging agenda to temper extremism, to stay true to right-wing nationalist principles in some respects, and to question leadership.
Greene, however, gave up her attempt to separate MAGA from the cult of Trump as soon as he turned on her. To be clear, the harassment she says she received is unacceptable, and I don’t doubt it terrified her. But, sadly, that’s par for the course in American politics. Most prominent politicians constantly face harassment and threats. They typically deal with them by stepping up their security and carrying on, with the understanding that some degree of risk comes with being involved in politics. Greene’s decision to simply exit the political scene just days after Trump started bad-mouthing her is extremely unusual, especially considering how many Democratic politicians have been on the receiving end of his followers’ harassment for years. And her citing harassment as helping motivate her exit was particularly striking given her own terrible record of endorsing calls for violence against elected representatives and harassing her colleagues. Greene hasn’t shown any signs that she wants to take accountability for her extraordinary contributions to the most venomous elements of Trumpism. She has articulated her apologies in such vague terms that it’s unclear what she’s really renouncing — and she has also fired back when asked for details. During a December “60 Minutes” interview, when CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl pointed out that Greene had contributed to the “toxic” culture she was condemning, Greene said Stahl had contributed to the toxicity, and she deflected from any real reckoning by calling Stahl “accusatory.” As my colleague Anthony Fisher has argued persuasively, Greene’s attempt at rehabilitation has been superficial at best. We can’t know Greene’s “true” inner feelings, but the speed with which she gave up on her rebellion, combined with her caginess about what she’s sorry for, suggests that she isn’t turning her back on the toxic culture she helped create as much as she was swallowed up by it. If she wanted to elevate the culture of the right she could’ve fought for it using the significant influence she held in Washington. Instead she took her brief stand and checked out — right after she secured her pension, that is.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer for MS NOW. Sign up for his newsletter. 
