Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s recent feud with President Donald Trump, that culminated in him calling her a “ranting Lunatic” and pulling his endorsement, appeared to be an irreparable break.
But some congressional Republicans think the fight will be short-lived.
“John Adams and Thomas Jefferson fought and then they were friends,” Rep. Chip Roy told NOTUS. “You have strong-willed people, they’re going to debate things out. They’ll come back around.”
The Georgia representative, once a top ally of the president, has broken with Trump in recent months. Greene was one of just four Republicans to join Democrats in signing a discharge petition demanding the Department of Justice release all of the files on disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. She also publicly criticized the Republican Party for its stance on health care during the shutdown and Trump for his attention to foreign affairs after campaign promises to prioritize national interests.
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“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,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social last week.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Monday that the president’s reaction to Greene’s recent criticism is understandable.
“It’s not surprising that the president was frustrated because of some of the criticism that Marjorie had been out stating to the media,” Johnson said. “Of course, she criticizes me all the time, but I work on unity in the party, and my encouragement of everybody is to get together.”
Greene responded to Trump in a post on X, saying the president pulled his endorsement in order to sway Republicans away from voting for the Epstein discharge petition. Though Trump called for the files’ release after it became clear the measure would pass, Greene told reporters on Tuesday that she still didn’t owe the president anything.
“I was called a traitor by a man that I fought for six years for, and I gave him my loyalty for free,” Greene said. “Let me tell you what a traitor is. A traitor is an American that serves foreign countries and themselves.”
The Epstein vote passed the House on a vote of 427-1 and the Senate unanimously.
Rep. Clay Higgins, who was the lone vote against releasing the Epstein files, said he expects Greene will find her way back to the president quickly.
While Higgins said he thinks Greene is just trying to do the right thing, he added Trump has a right to weigh in when Republicans take positions that are “injurious” to his presidency.
“The president has a right to express himself how sees fit, and so does Marjorie,” Higgins told NOTUS. “The bottom line is, I think that everyone will survive. They’re very much aligned ideologically, so I don’t see a separation forever.”
Rep. Thomas Massie said he was proud of the congresswoman’s willingness to stand up to Trump. Massie, a co-sponsor of the Epstein discharge petition and a critic of the president, told reporters that Greene has never changed any of her opinions and has simply been pointing out Trump’s own deviations from his campaign promises.
“She has really been loyal to him. He’s the one that threw her under the bus when she decided to go with the base on the discharge petition and also on the issue of foreign aid,” Massie said. “Marjorie is trying to put that into practice and that’s what drew the ire of the President.”
Rep. Derrick Van Orden, however, told NOTUS that the congresswoman’s rift with the president is “none of my business.” He added that Republicans should put their heads down, ignore the distraction and focus on their districts.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene and the President of the United States are individuals, and how they choose to comport themselves between themselves is between them and not me,” Van Orden told NOTUS. “It’s honestly just high school gossip.”
Rep. Ralph Norman, another Republican known to occasionally buck Trump, said that Greene’s constituents will ultimately be the ones to determine the consequences of her breaks with the party. Though Norman said he disagrees with some of Greene’s stances, he said what House Republicans think about her rift with the president matters far less than what voters in her own district do.
“Donald Trump’s done a tremendous job for the country,” Norman told NOTUS. “Marjorie Taylor [has] done a good job for her district, and that’s why they’ve re-elected her in pretty big numbers,” Norman told NOTUS. “Marjorie will have to answer that and to her district, and then hopefully she and Trump will get together.”
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