Please Don’t Try To Rehabilitate Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Image

The enemy of your enemy is not always your friend

MTG, image via Wikimedia Commons

On November 20th a funeral was held at the National Cathedral in Washington DC for former vice president and Iraq War architect Dick Cheney. In attendance were former presidents George W. Bush and Joe Biden as well as former vice presidents Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, Al Gore and Dan Quayle. The bi-partisan turnout was also reflected in the tenor and content of some of the speeches given at the service, most notably with Cheney’s daughter Liz saying “He knew that bonds of party must always yield to the single bond we share as Americans. For him, a choice between defense of the constitution and defense of your political party was no choice at all.”

Dick Cheney, a horrible war criminal and oil profiteer, experienced something of a liberal rebranding last year when he and his daughter both came out in support of Kamala Harris during her short-lived campaign against Donald Trump. Liz Cheney was even trotted out by the Harris campaign in key swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania where she appeared in front of signs that said “Country Over Party”, and urged conservatives to back Harris over Trump.

Some centrist and liberal media outlets praised the younger Cheney’s break with her party despite her record as an extremely conservative senator who (amongst other things) voted against expungement of criminal records for people serving time for marijuana-related offenses, opposed withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, repeatedly voiced support for Israel’s right to illegally annex the West Bank, defended her father’s policy of “enhanced interrogation” torture techniques during the War on Terror, and praised the Supreme Court for repealing Roe v. Wade.

As Dick Cheney’s funeral took place, Donald Trump (who was not invited) was once again embroiled in controversy surrounding the latest batch of emails released by the estate of his old friend Jeffrey Epstein. Bill Clinton is also all over these emails, which could potentially explain the “scheduling conflict” a spokesperson of his mentioned in an explanation of why “Bubba” wasn’t at Cheney’s funeral either.

In the midst of the newest chapter in this scandal that refuses to go away, another incredibly conservative figure has apparently joined #TheResistance against President Trump: (soon to be former) Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.

MTG pictured with ultra-conservative social media influencer Chaya Raichik aka “Libs of TikTok” in 2023. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

I have long paid close attention to MTG’s career as she has consistently been not only one of the most vocal Trump supporters but one of the most openly conspiratorial members of congress, tapping into and manipulating some of the deepest and darkest corners of the internet for political gains. As a leftist Jewish American, I have been particularly fascinated and disturbed by many of the antisemitic tropes she has weaponized since she was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2020.

After years working as a part-time CrossFit coach, Greene became galvanized to get into political activism during the 2016 election cycle, when she began writing articles for various extreme right wing conspiracy websites with names like American Truth Seekers and Law Enforcement Today. One of the most consistent threads amongst these pieces was her ardent support of the QAnon conspiracy theory, and she famously wrote at one point: “Make no mistake, Q is a patriot.”

After building her status by doing things like crashing events featuring drag queens reading books to children and posting videos about how there was no real evidence that a plane never crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11, MTG eventually began openly discussing the idea of a congressional run in 2019. Initially she said she would run for Georgia’s 7th congressional district, then changed to the 6th district, and then finally decided on the 14th district after Republican Tom Graves announced he would not seek reelection there.

Running on a platform that seemed to hold Islamophobia and antisemitic conspiracies in equal regard, MTG campaigned with signs that read “Stop Socialism” and also prominently featured Trump merch at her rallies. Her win was essentially guaranteed when Trump gave a quasi-endorsement in August 2020, calling her a “future Republican star”. A few weeks later, her Democratic Party challenger Kevin Van Ausdal dropped out of the race, clearing an easy path to victory.

Since then, she has consistently made news for antics like harassing Parkland school shooting survivor and Democratic Party operative David Hogg and heckling Joe Biden during his State of the Union. Despite a 2021 vote stripping her of her posts on two congressional committees which received bipartisan support, she was reelected in 2022, defeating Democratic challenger Marcus Flowers.

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Greene’s split with Trump began this summer when she referred to Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide, unexpectedly siding with her long-standing rival Ilhan Omar, as well as many Israeli genocide scholars and a UN commission of inquiry. At the time, I was rather impressed to see Greene take such a stance, while still remaining very clear eyed about the fact that much like other conspiratorial right wing figures such as Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes, her stance was more likely motivated by antisemitism than it was any genuine empathy for the citizens of Palestine. If anything, the fact that Greene came out and called it a genocide was more of an indictment of the feckless, noncommittal nature of the current Democratic Party than it was anything to praise her for.

But while I wasn’t entirely surprised that Greene’s isolationist, “America First” policies lead her to adopting the same opinion as the majority of Americans (yes, even conservatives) on Palestine, her break with Trump on the Epstein case took things to a whole other level. In some sense, this should also not be surprising, given that Epstein’s child sex trafficking is the closest thing in existence to a real life QAnon conspiracy. With Trump having previously embraced QAnon to a certain degree and campaigning heavily in 2024 with promises to release the mythical “Epstein files”, it was only a matter of time before the most QAnon-friendly member of the US government could continue to support Trump as he began acting more and more suspicious in regards to his own connection to the case.

Things finally reached a breaking point when Trump took to his dollar store Twitter knockoff Truth Social to call MTG a “traitor” and a “ranting lunatic”. But rather than backing down, Marjorie Taylor Greene did something quite extraordinary, something out of character not just for her but for modern American politicians as a whole: she went on CNN and apologized for “taking part in the toxic politics” that have been driving much of the political discourse in the past decade.

CNN anchor Dana Bash justifiably called her out for not speaking out against Trump until he had publicly turned on her, to which Greene responded by saying that this was “fair criticism.” She told Bash that in addition to attacks from the president, another reason for her about face was the recent assassination of conservative podcaster and political operative Charlie Kirk.

One of the more interesting aspects of the CNN exchange was when Bash pressed Greene on her assertions that Jeffrey Epstein was connected to the Israeli government, and whether Israel was putting pressure on Trump to block the release of the Epstein files. Greene was steadfast in her conviction that there are indeed well-documented connections between Epstein and members of the Israeli government and intelligence community, to which Bash remained visibly skeptical.

This is honestly quite funny considering Bash’s own ex-husband and ex-CIA chief of staff Jeremy Bash is mentioned numerous times in leaked Epstein emails where it appears he was involved in coordinating meetings and even organizing a Pentagon tour for Yoni Koren, an Israeli spy and top aide to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who was revealed to have stayed at Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan’s residence for weeks at a time. Barak also remains one of the top suspects for the unnamed “well-known prime minister” that deceased Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre claimed she was raped by in her recently-published posthumous memoir Nobody’s Girl.

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In the comment sections of the CNN interview and other outlets which reposted clips from it, there was a mixture of surprise, skepticism and admiration. Many of them were something along the lines of “WHAT IS HAPPENING” or “MTG sounding reasonable was not on my 2025 bingo card”. Others outright praised her by saying she “handled the interview very well” or with more hyperbolic statements such as “this is first time a Republican has apologized for their behavior since Nixon”.

On one particular Instagram account I racked up nearly 1,000 likes by simply replying “lol” to someone who wrote that they thought she was the future of the Republican Party and would make a good presidential candidate in 2028.

Late on Friday, November 21st, MTG announced in a lengthy video posted to Twitter that she would be resigning from her role in the House, with her last day being January 5th 2026. This announcement caught many (myself included) off guard, and was also met with a broad spectrum of responses.

Some Trump hardliners declared victory, believing they had forced her out. Others praised her for her service, and suggested she could start a new party with Thomas Massie, the Republican who has been spearheading the Epstein bill with California Democrat Ro Khanna. Young Turks host Cenk Uygur replied with “I would have never imagined saying this, but … don’t go. Stay and fight. Even though we still disagree on so many things, you were one of the very few honest people in Congress. Stay and fight!”

My favorite response was probably that of some random user by the name of Vincent Ton who wrote “Rest now, sister. We have the watch, and I will see you in Valhalla.”

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It’s unclear exactly what Greene’s next move will be. I am pretty confident that she will release a book in the next year, probably called something like Never Surrender. Many have speculated that she could run for Senator or even Governor of Georgia. I wouldn’t be surprised to see her attempt to launch an anti-Trump bid for the GOP’s 2028 presidential candidate, similar to Ron Desantis’ disastrous attempt at doing so leading up to the 2024 election. It would probably end in a similarly embarrassing fashion, although I’m sure that watching her debate JD Vance on stage would be an absolutely wild spectacle to behold.

But there is one thing that remains absolutely and totally clear, and I want everyone reading this, regardless of party affiliation, to understand this: Marjorie Taylor Greene fucking sucks.

She is a demon.

Just because she has suddenly turned woke after Charlie Kirk got shot and Donald Trump behaved exactly as anyone reasonable would expect him to do so regarding the Epstein files, does not mean that she now has to become some sort of #Resistance icon. I don’t care how many times she apologizes, I don’t care that she is bringing attention to aspects of the US-Israel relationship that mainstream news refuses to cover. It doesn’t make up for all of the Rothschild conspiracies or harassing Rashida Tlaib to force her to retake her oath on a Bible instead of the Quran.

A broken clock is right twice a day. That doesn’t mean you need to orient your schedule around it.

Greene stayed in congress just long enough to receive a pension, so she could simply retire now and we would never have to hear from her again. She could also go back to coaching CrossFit. I would have no issue with either of those choices.

But I am incredibly concerned that establishment Democrats — the same ones who are so terrified of Zohran Mamdani — will welcome her in with open arms and simply gloss over her incredibly troubling past. If Kamala Harris decides to make the ill-advised decision to run for president again in 2028 as she seems to be signaling at the moment, and she campaigns with MTG the same way she did with Liz Cheney, then she will absolutely lose every swing state again the way she did in 2024. If MTG announces she is going to run as a Democrat, it would genuinely be hilarious, but it would also be an indication of just how soulless and reactionary the Dems have become in the post-Trump era.

Now, if she spends the next decade as a consultant for DSA, engages in humanitarian work in Muslim-majority countries and converts to Judaism, and then decides she wants to launch a campaign as a Democrat, I may feel differently. But even if Donald Trump is implicated and impeached due to a miraculous leak of un-redacted Epstein files, even if JD Vance loses in 2028 and some new ascendant left-leaning Democrat wins in a landslide election, America has been fundamentally altered in the last decade and there is no going back. Donald Trump’s faux populism and a useless and out of touch Democratic Party have not only shifted the Overton window to the right, but allowed for the dissolution of social safety nets, a historic increase in wealth disparity, and the complete and total breakdown of anything remotely resembling civil political discourse.

That is the America that Marjorie Taylor Greene helped to build.