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Even before Marjorie Taylor Greene was sworn into Congress, she was a darling of Extremely right.
A MAGA soldier from a deep red district, Greene spent her first few years in office as a thorn in the side of the House GOP leadership. Her attention seeking, Biden bashing, pro-Trump antics endeared her to the conservative grassroots as much as it alienated her from GOP leaders. And she unapologetically owned the persona.
But lately, another Marjorie Taylor Greene has emerged — one who has gained favor with Chairman Kevin McCarthy and scorn from the conservative allies who once adored her. And according to a text Greene sent to Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) on Friday, Greene may be even more done with certain MAGA influencers than she is.
Who exactly is most upset is open to debate. The far-right instigators who for years encouraged Greene as a martyr to their cause now say she has lost the plot. They are furious with her support for McCarthy’s debt limit agreementwho last week on a dual baseand her socializing with McCarthy in general, which was illustrated in January when she supported him as a speaker on all 15 ballots.
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More recently, Greene cheer on the decision to show only a select group of conservative journalists unreleased tapes from January 6 — rather than releasing them to the public — has also enraged a small but vocal group on the right.
Even Greene’s recent divorce has been one source of attacks by misogynists of certain conservatives, with conservative shock jock Stew Peters going so far as to claim she is not a “healthy Christian mother.”
It may be an unintended set of consequences for some seemed like a deliberate rebrand by Greene in the past few months: joining McCarthy through the speaker battle, rejoining congressional committees she lost last semester, opening up to the press, and keeping it (kind of) together.
Through the subtle transformations, Greene’s new enemies call for retaliation in the traditionally conservative way: a primary challenge.
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In the past week, the former Trump administration officially became a podcaster Steve Bannon led the charge, calling for Greene to be preceded by a more right-wing candidate who is “REAL MAGA”.
A fringe group of far-right allies soon followed.
“I am 100 percent behind a challenge for MTG and look forward to taking on and helping a serious challenge for her,” Stew Peters told The Daily Beast.
A figure of the far-right activist and former Florida congressional candidate Laura Loomer, told The Daily Beast that she is already exploring a primary against Greene. Right now, Loomer doesn’t live in Georgia, let alone Greene’s county, but that doesn’t stop her from wishcasting.
“She took a job from me when she publicly accused me of being crazy… and told Trump not to hire me,” Loomer told The Daily Beast. “I think it’s only fair that I also get a chance to take over her job.”
“You know what Donald Trump always says? An eye for an eye,” she added.
Loomer further claimed that Republican officials in Georgia have attempted to recruit her to sit in Greene’s seat, though she would not provide any evidence to support that claim.
But when far-right characters have had enough of Greene, Greene seems to have had enough of them too.
In a text obtained by The Daily Beast, sent by Greene to conservative Rep. Matt Gaetz on Friday, the congressman acknowledged an argument.
“I have almost the same voting record as Thomas Massie, the most fiscally conservative member of Congress. And I voted with him on this bill,” Greene wrote in the lengthy text, referring to the debt limit agreement. “And Bannon, who was a senior adviser to Trump in the WH and was responsible for the first debt ceiling increase because Bannon is reckless and nowhere near fiscally responsible, is now telling everyone I should get a primary.”
“I just had a Cobb County town hall in the most populous area of my county last night and it was extremely successful. Standing ovation when I entered and standing ovation when I left,” Greene continued.
The bathroom fight fueled the breakup of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert
Gaetz was one of the leading voices and last opponents to stop McCarthy from becoming speaker – a stalemate that Greene found herself on the other side of as she worked to help McCarthy win the vote. Greene, Gaetz and Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) used to be a kind of outcast triumvirate in Congress, but that too has crumbled now that Greene has taken a new approach.
Recently, Greene has been at odds with some members of the House Freedom Caucus. The congressman had a number of spats last week with conservatives opposed to the debt limit deal, including a back-and-forth tweet with Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX). But even before the flame war with Roy, ashes The everyday beast reported last January that Greene argued with Boebert in the Speaker’s lobby bathroom because he resisted McCarthy’s bid as speaker.
“You were okay with taking millions of dollars from McCarthy, but you refuse to vote for him as Speaker, Lauren?” Green early Boebert. “Don’t be ugly,” Boebert shot back.
Greene seemed downright excited about burning those bridges. In her lengthy text to Gaetz, she suggested it was intentional breaking of certain relationships.
“Steve, Loomer and all the other outlets that attack me will not beat me,” she wrote. “That’s why people have reached out to me because they don’t like what Steve is doing to me… I’m at a point in my life where removing toxic and bad people from my life makes me very happy.”
Elsewhere in the text message, Greene Bannon lashed out about his involvement in the “We Build the Wall” plan, which prosecutors go after him again.
“I donated to the We Build The Wall campaign. I remember it said 100% of donations went to building the wall,” she wrote. “I was one of many naive people who believed in people and movements because I was so eager to hope that good things could happen.”
According to Greene, cooperation with Bannon is a thing of the past.
“Steve and I are not getting back together,” she wrote to Gaetz. “And if he continues like this, I’ll take the house and the kids. I hope you send it to Steve. Because I’m done.”
(Gaetz’s office did not respond to a request for comment about the text, nor to a question whether he had indeed forwarded the message to Bannon. Neither Greene nor Bannon responded, either.)
Why Steve Bannon is still going down for a crime forgiveness
In any case, Greene’s aggression towards Bannon and Loomer is well founded. Both are now working to take over her job after the congresswoman started focusing more on McCarthy. And both draw attention to a version of Greene that listeners of Bannon’s WarRoom podcast or followers of Loomer’s radical right-wing antics might dislike.
Greene has undeniably tried to turn the page on the version of herself that often isolated her from the rest of the House GOP. At the start of her time in Congress, Greene led her freshman class as a member who voted most against their own party. At the end of the last semester, she would do that alone voted with McCarthy 70 percent of the time.
This semester, according to McCarthy, she voted 94 percent of the time ProPublic.
But for now, Greene doesn’t seem to be sweating a far-right campaign against her.
A source close to Greene called Loomer’s attempts to preempt the congresswoman a “waste of her time.”
“If Loomer thinks this debt ceiling conversation has hurt her, then it’s going to be a long, hot year to campaign in northwestern Georgia,” the source said. “Choose someone else you can beat.”
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