Marjorie Taylor Greene: This is Donald Trump’s loyal agitator

Representative from Georgia
Trump’s right-wing screamer – the loud mutiny of Marjorie Taylor Greene

Marjorie Taylor Greene is a woman of extremes: extremely right-wing, extremely loud, extremely loyal to “her” President Donald Trump. Nobody rushes as confidently as she does. And rush, that’s what MTG has to do. Your latest target: party colleague Mike Johnson. Who is the woman who can’t be still?

There is this type of person who, as the saying goes, “just wants to watch the world burn.” Marjorie Taylor Greene is someone like that. When it comes to being right, a superlative has yet to be found for the 49-year-old. She has long been too radical for her ultra-right party colleagues. The representative from beautiful Georgia, like her messiah Donald John Trump listens to the threefold sound of her initials and is once again in her element these days.

Her latest target: fellow party member Mike Johnson, Speaker of the US House of Representatives. After months of back and forth, the evangelical actually dared to take a step towards the Democrats in order to clear the way for billions in existential aid for Ukraine. From the perspective of a small but loud mob led by Taylor Greene: high treason. And that despite Trump giving Johnson his patriarchal blessing: “I think he’s a very good person.”

But MTG’s resting heart rate is 180. Being loud is her daily bread. The fact remains: If Taylor Greene has his way, Johnson will soon share the fate of his predecessor Kevin McCarthy, whose flirtation with realpolitik was his downfall.

Who is the woman who can’t be still?

Marjorie Taylor Greene: late bloomer and right-wing rock star

“Nobody saw them coming. Not even Greene saw Greene coming,” US magazine puts it.“The Atlantic”. MTG is the prototype of an ultra-right opportunist who climbed the career ladder on Trump’s back. She is actually a late bloomer when it comes to politics.

According to her own statements, she only became politically active in 2016 – when she heard a speech by an aspiring entertainer who wanted to make the country “great” again. Before that, she and her husband ran her father’s construction company in the town of Alpharette, Georgia. She retired from the company in the early 2010s and began a career as a CrossFit trainer.

In 2019, she won the 14th district in Georgia for the Republicans in the House of Representatives elections in her first attempt – with the friendly support of the real estate mogul, who has since moved to the White House. There were no opponents within the party. At the turn of the year 2020/21, she moved from the provinces to the center of power. Of course, nothing has changed in her role model. If MTG were even closer to Trump, he would need steel toe shoes.

Today, the former fitness trainer is undoubtedly one of the most ardent supporters of the former president, who has been accused on several occasions. For a long time, her success was also due to the fact that, in contrast to ideologically similar figures such as MPs Lauren Boebert or Matt Gaetz, she appeared to be significantly more competent in terms of power politics. She knew when to go with the flow. Until she took a sharp right turn. Last summer, her terribly right-wing professional family threw her out the door. Breakup motto: It’s up to you, not us. The self-perceived Trump herald had simply become too extreme for the ultra-right Freedom Caucus (the star reported).

Extreme woman, extreme views: from National Divorce and lasers from space

It is questionable whether MTG has pushed the boundaries of what can be said. But at least she turned the volume control. The scene of how she interrupted US President Joe Biden several times during his State of the Union speech in February 2023 in a dazzling white winter coat, booed him with a smug grin and lowered thumbs and insulted him as a “liar” was a right-wing extremist suggestion in terms of tact. She also shone with audacity in the new edition a year later – this time in a bright red Trump outfit including a “Make America Great Again” cap. MTG, as we see again and again, is more of an effect than a cause.

Because their penchant for the absurd does not divide the Grand Old Party, but rather is a symptom of this division, which has reached frightening proportions under Trump. Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell once described MTG’s views as a “cancer” for the party. Some of their beliefs are extreme even by far-right standards.

A short selection: She claimed, among other things, that Jewish bankers had started forest fires in the USA using lasers from space and that there was a large-scale conspiracy to exchange heterosexual people for homosexual people. She spoke out in favor of a “National Divorce” – a “National Divorce” – as a result of which blue (democratic) and red (republican) states would go their own way (You can read the background here). She referred to the Democrats in the familiar way TV interview format “60 Minutes” as the “party of pedophiles” – after all, the Biden government supports gender reassignment surgery – which for them is nothing other than the “sexualization of children”.

But the swearer may now be “too big to fail”, too popular to be secretly pushed off the stage within the party. However, it is not only the divisive Trump who is to blame for this, but also the GOP itself, whose veterans had ridiculed right-wing loudmouths like MTG for too long and thus made it possible for them to stay in the fast lane in Trump’s slipstream.

However, that is exactly MTG’s weak point: it puts everything on one card. If Trump makes a comeback in November, loyalists like MTG are likely to have golden times ahead. And if things get dangerously hot for their patron in court, MTG will do everything in its power to put out the flames. Or to set fire somewhere else as a distraction.

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in April 2023 and has been updated accordingly.

Other sources: “New York Times“; “Politico“; “Vox“; “The Hill“; “Roll call“; “Washington Post“