US lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene, an influential right-wing figure and MAGA acolyte who recently broke with President Donald Trump, announced she is quitting her seat in Congress, prompting him to double down on Saturday on accusations she is a “traitor.”
In a video posted online, the 51-year-old Republican congresswoman from Georgia, who was elected in 2020, said on Friday she had “always been despised in Washington DC and never fit in.”
Greene said she did not want her supporters and family to endure “a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the President we all fought for, only to fight and win my election while Republicans will likely lose the midterms.”
“I will be resigning from office with my last day being January 5, 2026,” she said.
Trump responded on his Truth Social platform by referring to the lawmaker as Marjorie “Traitor” Brown, a label she had singled out as unacceptable in an explanation of her decision to step away.
“For some reason, primarily that I refused to return her never ending barrage of phone calls, Marjorie went BAD,” he said in the post early on Saturday morning.
The shock move by Greene was the clearest sign yet of a growing split in MAGA world, still churning over strong Democratic victories in this month’s off-year elections, including the win for leftist New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani — who had a chummy meeting with Trump Friday.
The movement has been particularly riven over Trump’s flip-flop on releasing emails related to the case of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein, a wealthy financier, moved in elite circles for years, cultivating close ties with business tycoons, politicians, academics and celebrities to whom he was accused of trafficking girls and young women for sex.
The Epstein affair appeared to have forced the break between Trump and Greene — something she referenced in her resignation speech.
“Standing up for American women who were raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the President of the United States, whom I fought for,” Greene said.
Trump ended his Truth Social post by saying: “Nevertheless, I will always appreciate Marjorie, and thank her for her service to our Country!”
Just this week, Congress passed and the president signed a law requiring government records on the millionaire sex predator to be made public, after months of Trump trying to keep a lid on the material.
But before his about-face on the issue, the president announced he was withdrawing all support for “‘Wacky’ Marjorie,” a vocal proponent of the release of the so-called Epstein files.
He followed up the following morning with multiple posts on his Truth Social platform attacking Greene as a “lightweight” and even a “traitor” to the Republican Party.
The former key political ally to Trump subsequently said she was being targeted by a wave of threats.
Greene had previously been a standard-bearer of Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, a proponent of immigrant deportation, champion of gun rights and a vaccine skeptic.
The high-profile rupture came after Greene distanced herself from the president, who has faced growing criticism over US cost of living concerns and the Epstein scandal.
Trump himself had campaigned on releasing the Epstein files, delighting a political base fervent about throwing a spotlight on the scandal and convinced that doing so would expose many powerful figures.
Greene’s sudden shift away from Trump prompted speculation that she is lining up for her own presidential bid in 2028, although she dismissed it as “baseless gossip.”