Prominent conservative women are laying waste to the MAGA patriarchy.
Donald Trump’s movement has been constructed around a manufactured aesthetic of hypermasculinity and performative bravado. This has been marketed to the president’s followers as something to aspire toward, and yet it seems some of the conservative movement’s most recognizable women aren’t too satisfied with the state of MAGA masculinity.
During a Tuesday appearance on “The View,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene rebuked “weak Republican men” in her party for what she deemed to be a failure to enact Trump’s agenda. The Georgia Republican, who has been denouncing congressional GOP leadership amid the government shutdown, recently told The Washington Post: “There’s a lot of weak Republican men, and they’re more afraid of strong Republican women. So they always try to marginalize the strong Republican women that actually want to do something and actually want to achieve.”
And earlier this week, Greene publicly criticized “pathetic Republican men” for “attacking me for going on Bill Maher’s show and The View.”
“Sorry I’m not sorry I don’t obey Republican men’s demands that I, as a woman, don’t remain seen but not heard,” she wrote on X.
Lest you believe there is some feminist revolution afoot in the MAGA movement, there have certainly been recent examples of prominent right-wing women launching, shall we say, pettier attacks on MAGA masculinity as well. But that the attacks occurred at all shows how manhood and masculinity are being weaponized in conservative infighting.
In an example, conservative influencer Candace Owens criticized FBI Director Kash Patel after he published an oddly personal social media post defending himself and his girlfriend against allegations that he used an FBI jet to fly to one of her singing performances in Pennsylvania and then to Tennessee, where she lives.
“This does not make you look masculine. It does not make you look like somebody who should be taken seriously,” she said.
And Rep. Nancy Mace unleashed a rebuke after two fellow South Carolina Republicans, Sens. Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham, denounced her involvement in a recent incident with airport security officials.
In a post seemingly accusing Scott and Graham of “punching down, shaming and attacking” her, Mace wrote that “REAL MEN PROTECT WOMEN!”
“Why are two men with a half dozen personal security guards everywhere they go, offended by a woman, who has been assaulted for her beliefs, and can’t get the same security, and very much cares about her safety in the wake of Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump getting shot?” she wrote on X.
Again, we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking all of this means that a pro-woman uprising is in store for the Republican Party. What it does appear to show, however, is how some prominent women on the right are undercutting conservatives’ efforts to portray MAGA masculinity as a force for good — and, instead, framing it as cowardly or self-serving.