In another sign that the MAGA coalition is imploding, President Donald Trump pulled back his endorsement of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican firebrand from Georgia who, until recently, was one of his most devoted supporters. Moreover, the president said he would endorse a primary challenger. Greene, who was inspired to first run for Congress by Trump, has become increasingly critical of him.
“Over the past few weeks, despite my creating Record Achievements for our Country … all I see ‘Wacky’ Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!” Trump said Friday in a Truth Social post. “I understand that wonderful, Conservative people are thinking about primarying Marjorie in her District of Georgia, that they too are fed up with her and her antics and, if the right person runs, they will have my Complete and Unyielding Support.”
The next day, he went after Greene again: “Lightweight Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Brown (Green grass turns Brown when it begins to ROT!), betrayed the entire Republican Party when she turned Left, performed poorly on the pathetic View, and became the RINO that we all know she always was. Just another Fake politician, no different than Rand Paul Jr. (Thomas Massie), who got caught being a full-fledged Republican In Name Only (RINO)! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” Trump said in his signature lowbrow fashion.
What Happened?
Trump told reporters while on Air Force One that Greene had changed, that something happened to her. But it’s no mystery what has happened. Like many others, Greene has become disillusioned with Trump’s failure to deliver on some of his most important America First promises. She has made several public comments indicating that she’s frustrated with his excessive focus on foreign matters and his refusal to halt foreign aide to all countries — all while average Americans continue to struggle with the high cost of everyday items. Greene voiced these concerns in her conversation with the leftist women on the talk show The View. “[People are] so tired of their hard-earned tax dollars being sent overseas to foreign wars, foreign aide, foreign causes — while life in America just becomes more unaffordable. We want this money invested at home for our infrastructure, for programs, for our people,” she said.
Part of a Pattern
Trump’s recent split with Greene is part of a pattern. He has also turned on Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who has also opposed the president’s foreign policy and fiscal recklessness. Trump has supported the idea of primarying Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) — who has voted against Trump-backed budget bills and made the media rounds criticizing his interventionist foreign policy.
Greene, Massie, and Paul are among the few federal legislators with proven Constitutional voting records. The New American’s Freedom Index gives Greene a 97 percent cumulative score, Massie a 99 percent score, and Paul a score of 96 percent.
To make matters worse, Trump not only attacks the principled legislators, but he backs the worst of them. He has endorsed one of the most Constitution-averse, war-loving neocons in all of Congress. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) represents everything that’s wrong with the Republican Party. He loves big spending, big government, and military adventurism. He’s a huge fan of spending piles of cash on overseas wars and foreign aide. He is the epitome of a Uniparty swamp creature, and his 57 percent cumulative Freedom Index score reflects it. Nevertheless, earlier this year, Trump announced, “Senator Lindsey Graham has my Complete and Total Endorsement for Re-Election — HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN. Everyone in South Carolina should help Lindsey have a BIG WIN next year!”
The Epstein Files
In addition to opposition to foreign wars and deficit spending, Greene, Massie, and Paul have been pushing for transparency about Jeffrey Epstein, another point of frustration for Trump. When he campaigned last year, Trump said he would support releasing the Epstein files, albeit with some hesitation. But for months now, he has been trying to put the kibosh on that very transparency, igniting a firestorm of backlash among his base and supporters in the media. As a result, suspicion has grown among conservatives that Trump may indeed have something to hide. The emails released last week did little to put those suspicions to rest.
Massie has been working with Democrat Ro Khanna of California on a discharge petition to bypass House leadership and force a vote on a resolution that would release Justice Department files on Epstein. The special election victory of Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) gave Massie the 218 votes he needed to push the vote onto the House floor. With Massie included, only four Republicans signed the petition. Last week, Trump unsuccessfully pressured at least one of those legislators, Representative Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), to withdraw her signature, according to reports.
By Sunday, Massie was telling the media that he expected “a hundred or more” House Republicans to vote for the resolution. Sensing the inevitable, by Sunday evening, Trump caved and issued a surprising reversal. “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party,” he said in a Truth Social Post. “I DON’T CARE! All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT …”
On Monday, Massie thanked the president for encouraging Republicans to vote yes on the resolution. He told reporters, “He got tired of me winning,” a soft elbow in the president’s side, who just days earlier said, in a bizarrely juvenile social media post, that Massie’s wife “will soon find out that she’s stuck with a LOSER!.”
House Republicans will vote on releasing the DOJ’s Epstein files tomorrow.
MAGA Implosion
Despite Trump’s recent reversal on the Epstein files, the MAGA camp is imploding. While he has done some things well — he’s largely delivered on border security and energy — Trump has made a series of bad decisions. And the people are frustrated. A recent theory is that behind Trump’s freefall is his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, whose long neocon and lobbying background was suspect from the beginning. We profiled Wiles in a February print issue. “Wiles will also have a say in who gains access to the president. That type of gatekeeping power has some in MAGA Land worried, given Wiles’ Establishment pedigree,” we noted.
Raheem Kassam, editor-in-chief of The National Pulse, recently tied Wiles to the early November poll from CNN showing Trump’s disapproval rating rising to an all-time high of 63 percent. He wrote in a social media post, “There has been more focus on the international than the domestic economy so far this year,” adding, “With Susie Wiles vetoing anything remotely MAGA, the White House agenda has trended back to a more corporate-friendly GOP median, which is leading to Dems leading on the generic ballot question for the first time since 2022.”
Moreover, Wiles is also getting credit for sabotaging the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again ) movement. The Redacted podcast had on whistleblowers Dr. Steven Hatfill and Grey Delany, who said this very thing.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., however, defended Wiles as recently as Friday. He said in an X post, “The MAHA movement has no better friend in Washington than Susie Wiles, who has supported every effort to end the chronic disease epidemic and restore health freedom to every American.”
America First
Trump is not even one year into this term and the coalition he has led for 10 years is in danger of completely collapsing. His neocon foreign policy, deficit spending, and attempt to make the Epstein saga go away without further transparency has alienated his base.
Sensing that he’s losing his influence, he recently declared himself the movement. “Don’t forget: MAGA was my idea. MAGA was nobody else’s idea,” he said on The Ingraham Angle. “I know what MAGA wants better than anyone else, and MAGA wants to see our country thrive.”
Trump is wrong. MAGA was not his idea. The idea of a leadership class that prioritizes its citizens and national sovereignty is a fundamental element of Americanism that has always existed to some degree. From Barry Goldwater to the Tea Party to the Ron Paul Revolution, Americans have been yearning for leaders who prioritize secure borders, fiscal responsibility, and nonintervention foreign policy.
What Trump has been doing for the last 10 years was tap into a voter base that was already there, a cohort that just needed a point man. Trump didn’t convince people that putting America first was a good idea. He just convinced them that he would do it. And he convinced them that, because he was already rich, he couldn’t be corrupted.
Now people are no longer sure any of that is true.
The silver lining here is that this highlights the problem with putting too much faith in personalities. The American Republic our Founders gave us was intentionally designed to distribute power among three branches of government. And the executive was never meant to be the most powerful branch.
It’s long past time to restore to the legislative branch the powers allocated by the U.S. Constitution. We’ve created a tool to do just that right here.
This article was originally published on The New American.
