By Noah Rothman
Monday, February 02, 2026
At a time when most Republicans still support the
president and endorse “all or most” of his ideas, the conspiracist and now
ex-Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is making a bold play for her
political future by attempting to convince the GOP that the president has
betrayed them.
The promise of populism, she contends, will be unrealized
in this presidency because Trump has allowed MAGA to fall prey to flatterers,
rent-seekers, and well-connected influence peddlers.
“Those are the people that get the special favors,”
Greene told the provocative
radio personality Kim Iversen. “They get the government contracts, they get the
pardons, or somebody they love or one of their friends gets a pardon.”
It’s amusing to watch as Greene’s self-serving journey of intellectual discovery has led her
to conclude that a political theory with no fixed principles beyond
majoritarianism (and majoritarianism within only one political faction, at
that) might be uniquely susceptible to corruption. But who is it,
precisely, who is doing the corrupting? I bet you can guess:
“It’s the foreign countries. They are running the show
here,” Greene alleged. “It’s the major big corporations and what is best for
the world. That’s really what MAGA is.”
Ah, but what foreign countries and which moneyed
interests are influencing American policy? Those in the control of the Jews, of
course.
“We are seeing war on behalf of Israel, we are seeing the
people in Gaza, innocent people in Gaza, hundreds of thousands of them
completely murdered so that they can build some new real estate development,”
Greene continued. “Money can pour in, and everybody can get rich there in the
new Gaza.”
Little that MAGA stands for today has much to do with
“America or the American people,” the former lawmaker declared. Rather, the
“whole plan” that is being implemented by Trump and company “is really a new
world order” initiative.
Ah. We might have suspected that a theory of social
organization predicated on the idea that a nefarious, ill-defined cabal of
rapacious elites would also be responsible for populism’s failures.
There are those in the MAGA firmament — Vice President JD Vance, most prominently — who seem
convinced that the most paranoid, suspicious, and ignorant elements within the
online (and, really, nowhere else) right must be placated by any figure who
could conceivably succeed Donald Trump at the top of the GOP hierarchy. Greene
has demonstrated why that enterprise on those terms will fail.
Anyone who tries to meet the aggrieved-populist true
believers in the middle on this one will be outflanked by a genuine
kook. Those who make the attempt while trying to avoid going so far overboard
that they alienate conventional conservatives will either be goaded by the
kooks into a self-destructive game of one-upmanship or give up the effort entirely.
It’s not a game worth playing.
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