Save articles for later
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.
Got it
Do you really have to hand it to Marjorie Taylor Greene?
America has come to know the congresswoman from Georgia as a political pit bull who's willing to sink her teeth into the sundry MAGA conspiracy theories that have helped President Donald Trump take over the Republican Party and the country as a whole. But in recent weeks she's undergone something of a rehabilitation -- blaming Republicans for a government shutdown and advocating the release of the Epstein files -- and bucked her party's leadership in the process.
Some people are quick to give her credit, arguing that her about-face on Trump is a sign she's truly seen the light, awakening from her Trumpian fugue state. They're missing the point. We aren't watching a political renaissance or a feel-good story about deprogramming the MAGA faithful. We are watching a middle-aged career woman time the market on her political and professional ambitions. She has recognised, perhaps rightly, that there is no place for women like her in Trump's halls of power. So she's building herself an escape route.
Last week, Greene announced that she will be leaving Congress in January. She is not going quietly. A statement justifying her decision is four pages long. Her call-out of politicians from both sides of the aisle as a weak, cowardly and exploitative "political industrial complex" has a nice ring to it. But it's all downhill from there.