In response to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announcing her planned retirement, MAGA firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., praised the former House speaker on CNN Thursday for “an incredible career for her party” and said she was “very impressed at her ability to get things done.” Greene added, “I wish we could get things done for our party like Nancy Pelosi was able to deliver for her party,” and said, “I wish her well in retirement.”
Greene is the same politician who, shortly after entering Congress in 2021, was stripped of her committee assignments after reports emerged that she had liked comments on social media calling for Pelosi’s assassination.
If you’re scratching your head at Greene now praising Pelosi and wishing her well, then you’re not alone. Greene has long represented the most virulent wing of the MAGA movement, heckling Democrats and peddling noxious conspiracy theories about the left. What was she doing acting so graciously?
Her wager, it appears, is that she might be able to position herself as future leader of the right, in part by delivering where she thinks Trump has failed.
I’d put my money on ambition for higher office. In fact, the highest office: The news publication NOTUS reports that Greene has “confided to colleagues that she wants to run for president, according to four sources familiar with the matter, including one who has spoken with her directly about it.” (Greene told NOTUS after publication that the article was “baseless” and “disappointing.”)
When asked on comedian Tim Dillon’s podcast in October if she wanted to run for president in 2028, Greene sidestepped the question, leaving the possibility open. “I hate politics so much, Tim,” Greene said. “People are saying that, and I’ve seen a few people saying ‘she’s running.’… What I’m doing right now is I very much want to fix problems. That’s honestly all I care about.”
Greene appears to be attempting to change her reputation in various ways, by trying to become a little less toxic and separating herself from the MAGA mainstream. Her wager, it appears, is that she might be able to position herself as future leader of the right, in part by delivering where she thinks Trump has failed. But it’s going to be an uphill climb for Greene, who is most well-known for holding the bizarre antisemitic theory that wildfires were caused by space lasers controlled by the Rothschilds.
Greene has historically been the kind of Republican most at home on shows such as Alex Jones’ disinformation-laden “Infowars.” But a suddenly more pleasant Greene has shown an increasing interest in national mainstream media, appearing recently on CNN, “The View” and “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
On CNN on Thursday, she talked about “speaking nicely” to everyone. “I’m trying to lead by example, and I can only do my part, and that is to talk to everyone and to talk to everyone in kindness,” she said. “We don’t all have to agree, but that’s being an American, and thank goodness for that, right?”
Greene’s appeal to kindness and civility was pretty rich coming from a woman who called a Parkland school shooting survivor an “idiot” (and that school shooting itself a hoax) and interrupted and jeered at former President Joe Biden during multiple State of the Union addresses. But to the extent that she is trying to change how she engages with the public, she might be trying to carve out a more friendly persona, looking to appear more conventionally “presidential,” and maybe believes there is an opening for a MAGA politician who takes a less overtly adversarial posture.
In addition to projecting a softer image, Greene is also making political pivots. Over the past year, and especially in recent months, she has broken with President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson on several issues and openly criticized them. In the ongoing government shutdown, she has sided with the Democrats who’ve called for extending Affordable Care Act subsidies (even as she’s spread misinformation about undocumented immigrants using the ACA). She signed the Democratic-led effort to force a House vote that would require the Justice Department to release its Epstein files. And on foreign policy, she’s been a lonely voice in the GOP, calling Israel’s conduct in Gaza a genocide and trying to block aid to Israel. She also criticized Trump sending aid to Ukraine and slammed Trump’s strikes on Iran.
It would be a mistake to read the list above and say Greene is tacking to the left. Instead, her departures from the GOP leadership follow a pattern of idealism on the right: an agenda to defend right-wing nationalist tenets that Trump has broken from in the eyes of some of its purists. For example, much of the MAGA base was infuriated by Trump’s 180-degree turn: from promising to release the Epstein files to deciding against their release. The Epstein scandal is the closest thing to a real-world analogue to the QAnon conspiracy theory.
As for foreign policy, Trump’s general maintenance of the status quo on Israel and interventionism abroad is at odds with the more isolationist tendencies among some in the MAGA coalition. And as for health care subsidies, some right-wing nationalists are either agnostic about or mildly supportive of a moderate social safety net, either out of a strategic or ideological belief that the austerity-minded right is wrong about what ails the economy. (Some right-wing nationalists are more concerned about trade and immigration as economic strategies than they are cutting back social programs.)
Greene likely fancies herself a strategic advocate for true MAGA orthodoxy. “I’m not some sort of blind slave to the president, and I don’t think anyone should be,” she said in an interview with NBC News in October. This all sets her up for a potential lane for what in 2028 could be the biggest intra-MAGA presidential primary to date. Her attempts at independence could also shield her from association with Trump’s declining credibility on the economy and the social safety net.
Will Greene’s makeover work? I’ve learned to not make predictions about where Republican voters might draw the line on considering a candidate out-of-bounds in GOP primaries. But it’s hard to imagine her shedding her reputation as a fanatic — even by the low standards of the Trump era — in a general election.