A longtime ally of President Donald Trump's in Congress has been seeking more and more daylight with him on key issues in recent weeks — and the rift could be indicative of how Republicans are planning for a future without Trump in it, Will Sommer wrote for The Bulwark on Monday.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), until now, has been known mainly for being an unswerving ally of the president, and for pushing bizarre conspiracy theories involving Jewish space lasers. But recently, cracks have started to show.
Sommer wrote she "has been breaking with the movement an awful lot over the past week. Greene has offered stinging criticisms of the Trump administration’s handling of deportations, the Epstein files, and tariffs."
And her dissent didn't stop there.
"She slammed Republicans’ negotiations on the government shutdown, saying her party needs to compromise with Democrats to prevent Obamacare subsidies from expiring," said Sommer, though she stopped short of saying the party should directly agree to this to end the shutdown.
All of this, Sommer speculated, "does give us a glimpse into what the post-Trump Republican party could look like." Specifically, she is hinting that Republicans might want a clean break from Trump and the party at large's willingness to slash critical insurance programs their own followers rely on.
That strategy may be less about rebellion and more about survival.
"In the same way that influential pro-Trump podcaster Steve Bannon has opposed cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid, Greene has recognized — I think savvily — that issues like rising insurance costs could sink the popularity of other Trump agenda items like an immigration crackdown. Trump’s own pollsters have said the same," wrote Sommer. Similarly, she could be testing the waters for her own candidacy in 2028, in which she contrasts "real" America First policies like isolationism with the GOP's obsession with cutting social programs.
"Greene may be working on Marjorie 2.0 — chips falling where they may — but she’s not giving up conspiracy theories entirely," Sommer concluded. "In a tactic she’s probably much more comfortable deploying, she claimed on Monday that there was a 'paid social media lying campaign' targeting her — a campaign, she suggested, that was run by Israeli operatives. The more things change..."
