It’s that crazy bouncing football called “predicting the future” all over again on the world stage, every player on the field chasing it amidst a muddy squall, the ball slithering and sliding just beyond everyone’s grasp. Thought you had it, until you didn’t, and there it goes again…
How diabolical of the game’s founders to make the ball such a pointed, often unmanageable mess that keeps eluding a firm grasp!
So Marjorie Taylor Greene makes a months-long, conspicuous, two-issue policy break with the president whom she continues to insist she loves. But on these issues of Israel’s pitiless destruction and slaughter of Palestinians and the release of the Epstein files, she has ostensibly heard enough from her constituents back home in Georgia and been privy to enough in her congressional role to break with the president in respectful but definite tones.
Whereupon he, sticking to a well-worn script in such matters, denounces her with his usual vitriol that includes a dark pledge to derail her political career.
A career, we should note, that has consisted of exactly zero actual legislation she has sponsored or co-sponsored into law, but has included high-frequency, rhetorical bomb-throwing and conspiracy-theorizing that has made her a pariah in many quarters, and…possibly the most oft-quoted legislator in all of Congress.
Is it possible she has realized, perhaps in something akin to the Apostle Paul’s conversion experience on Damascus Road, that she has been going about this salvation thing all wrong?
Then, as the president’s denunciation leads to the usual threats on Greene’s very life from the anonymous cretins of our world who await his word to crawl out from their holes and spew their venom, she drops a bombshell resignation letter late Friday announcing she will be giving up her seat come January.
This on the same day that the president and his previously denounced bitter enemy, New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, engage in a New York-Bros-from-Queens lovefest in the Oval Office.
The meeting, no doubt met with bated breath by both staffs, has both of them beaming and the president exclaiming, “I think you’re going to have, hopefully, a really great mayor. The better he does, the happier I am.”
No, you were not imagining it when mere weeks ago the president was threatening to have Mamdani arrested and deported merely for being who he is. (An avowed democratic socialist, which in Trump’s world means only: “America-hater!”)
To which I will only implore, “Come on, would somebody please finally fall on that ball!!
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I will not dare try falling on that ball myself here with any pronouncement that it is settled in place and we can now coordinate a systematic strategy to advance toward a touchdown. So I will also now retire the football metaphor that has gotten us this far to first proclaim something along the lines of, “WOW & YOWZA, CAN YOU BELIEVE ALL THIS?”
After the initial moments of shock and disbelief pass, we are obliged, being the serious data devotees we are, to indeed believe that what has been duly recorded and documented to have happened, actually happened.
But then comes the more tenuous and cloudy question: Should we in any way “believe,” i.e. “trust” in Greene’s (or Trump’s, or Mamdani’s) sincerity?
One immediate response theme strewn all over social media within moments of Greene’s announcement suggests it as just an outrageous zig to all her previous zags, performative to its very core. Rather than bespeaking sincerity, this view sees it as a cover designed to keep herself in the media glare and/or serve as a platform for a next chapter, in which she will run for governor or the Senate or ask to be crowned the one true and legitimate Heiress to MAGA Nation.
I’ll say here and now that view has a serious trove of data in its corner, and I’m not totally convinced it is wrong.
A competing view: Perhaps she has finally wearied of the non-stop combat that continues to riven the country and which she has, from all appearances at least, gleefully participated in over many years now.
At age 51, is it possible she has realized, perhaps in something akin to the Apostle Paul’s conversion experience on Damascus Road, that she has been going about this salvation thing all wrong?
She would certainly not be the first to realize more of her life now trails behind her than stretches ahead.
That insight often engenders a sustained look into a rearview mirror that may not reflect the view most people hope for as they zip on ahead, ever closer to their life’s terminus.
Her quite remarkable statement in going all Dalai Lama on CNN’s Dana Bash strongly favors this latter view, at least in everything we can glean from its surface:
“And I would like to say, humbly, I’m sorry for taking part in the toxic politics. It’s very bad for our country. It’s been something I’ve thought about a lot, especially since Charlie Kirk was assassinated. I’m only responsible for myself and my own words and actions, and I’m committed—and I’ve been working on this a lot lately—to put down the knives in politics. I really just want to see people be kind to one another.”
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Now, before I get inundated with reams of her past quotes by skeptics who suspect only the “outrageous zig” possibility mentioned above is operative here, I want to just say:
1) I’ve seen those quotes, please save yourself the typing, and,
2) I do harbor my own skepticism and doubts, and,
3) As someone who believes in the possibility of redemption, transformation and true conversion, however rare they are in real life (and doubly so in political life), I feel it is incumbent upon me as a person of faith in human goodness to at least remain open to such a possibility.
The exception is when it demonstrates such obvious, transparent cynicism of someone who has flipped and flopped like a circus clown through their career that only a fool would take it at face value. (Oh—you were thinking of Marco Rubio, too?)
Part of the problem with the “She’s faking it” argument is it’s hard, at least in this moment, to figure out how Greene might be playing an angle, or a kind of three-dimensional chess in pursuit of a bigger prize than she holds now, which is no bowl of mushy beans as one of the most prominent and powerful members of the United States Congress.
Or that she’s giving up, like a Jeff Flake who sees the writing on the wall, and is bailing early rather than face the onslaught of the Trump electoral machine and ultimate rejection by the voters. For one, it is not at all clear that she would lose her next election.
For another, she has shown too much fire (we should certainly give her that much) to think she’d shrink away from a fight she believes in.
Here’s another quite remarkable (and long!) sentence from her resignation letter, in which she cites her district’s “common people” she claims to love and work so hard for. Many of them, as has been reported abundantly in media post-mortems of the Democrats’ 2024 electoral disaster, feel abandoned and unheard. In Greene’s words, they are “no longer easily convinced by paid political propaganda spokespersons and consultants on TV and paid shills on social media obediently serving with cult-like conviction to force others to swallow the political party talking points.”
Why?
“Because they know how much credit card debt they have, they know how much their own bills have gone up over the past 5 years, they actually do their own grocery shopping and know food costs too much, their rent has increasingly gone up, they have been outbid by corporate asset managers too many times when they put in an offer to buy a house, they have been laid off after being forced to train their visa-holding replacement, the college degree they were told to earn only left them in debt with no big six-figure salary, they see more homeless people than ever on their own community streets, they can’t afford health insurance or practically any insurance, and they just aren’t stupid.”
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Nine years ago, I wrote a post-mortem on the 2016 election with the lamentation, unforeseen by me during the campaign, that “Bernie Would’ve Won.” The realization came with many data bits that included the discovery that substantial numbers of Trump voters would have pulled the lever for Sanders but could not abide Hillary Clinton.
Some of that can certainly be attributed to the tenacity of misogyny in human life (not just America), but that doesn’t explain all the seemingly irreconcilable differences between Trump and Sanders that simple rational thinking suggests would never allow their respective voters to cross over for each other in the voting booth.
But a more sustained look suggests the answer to the conundrum is up above in Greene’s description of her “common Americans” constituents.
When we stretch out far enough on the extremes of any political or social movement, we often find our chief antagonists looking straight at us, having been there all the time, just coming from a different direction.
Greene’s words above could easily have come from Sanders and fallen on welcome ears from the millions of anti-system, disenfranchised Bernie Bros who suffused his campaign. And you know who else would probably find those words much more simpatico than not?
Mamdani and Trump.
Mamdani, I should hasten to add, because he really believes it. Trump because he has convinced millions of his voters he really believes it, too.
This, along with a desperate Trump’s desire to steady his ship after recent intemperate outbursts calling for the execution of various Democratic politicians and the already infamous “Quiet, Piggy!” bark at a female journalist, was at the foundation, I am convinced, of his sudden hail-fellows-well-met embrace of Mamdani yesterday.
And in the bargain, Mamdani also had much to gain from the endeavor, proving himself a more-than-adept schmoozer, which explained plenty about his election victory.
As for Trump, he at least talks a good game along the lines sketched out by Greene, and which Mamdani also emphasized repeatedly in his campaign.
Does that mean Greene, Trump and Mamdani hold the same basic values, and we shouldn’t expect much difference in the outputs of their governance?
Oh hell, no—we are talking rhetoric here, not its translation into policy or daily governance. But it does point out how closely populisms can brush up against each other at least rhetorically, and how it does provide possible openings for a wide range of coalitions, openings that are much harder to come by in our two-party system than they are in parliamentary democracies. But…not impossible?
If Trump were smarter than he is, or did not have the evil amoralist Stephen Miller in his ear, he’d throw a lot more to the populist throngs than he does. So his ever-growing clan of homey billionaires might have to settle for a few billion, or even a piddling several hundred million fewer dollars in order to keep kids’ school lunch boxes full, or save them from spending winter nights toddling after Mommy into the tent in the park?
Such minor feints toward generosity and true empathy for the plight of “common Americans” would likely keep the pitchfork hordes at bay, lest hey ever come to realize (and then act on), the plain facts Greene notes: that their lives keep getting worse while the world’s hedge fund and crypto billionaires keep adding zeros onto their bottom lines.
Much of it today courtesy of the reigning MAGA idol busily presiding over luxury Great Gatsby dinners at his Florida estate while also building his pet project of the $300 million White House ballroom, paid for with “private funds” from corporate titans who of course expect nothing, nothing at all, in return.
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Well I’m gonna wait and see. I appreciate your multi-pronged approach to the question of her motivation. But I’m not swallowing the conversion just yet. Consistency and honesty are not, after all, her calling cards. Grabbing media attention, wearing fluffy coats into the House to be as visible as she can be – this could easily be another one of those…so let’s see. Shall we place small bets on how long this lasts?
After all, if she were really converted, how about staying in the fight and making better things happen? Isn’t that what would really help her dear constituents? Ach, there I go again, hoping for the best in people. Yup, when it comes to MAGA folks, I feel more cynical by the day. Sadly.
Thanks for the thought-provoking post, Andrew.
Yeah, I’m far from convinced myself, and wouldn’t have given it two thoughts if I had not seen the clip of the Bash interview. If she faked that conversion theme of sounding like the Dalai Lama, she’s a better actor than I gave her credit for, but of course it is entirely possible that it’s all show. As you say, we’ll just have to see—or try to follow the bouncing ball, or whatever…
OTOH, she would not be the first to fall under the spell of such a simple pure pitch, and who knows, maybe her evangelical pastor is turning that way him-herself? Real change is so hard—but not impossible! Great to hear from you, maybe you can help keep me sane through ’28?.
I don’t think I can help with figuring out Marjorie Taylor Greene, but I do think Mamzani is a rock star who may change things in ways we can’t even foresee now.
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s decision to step down as a congresswoman in January had all the ear markings of Richard Nixon’s 1952 “Checkers Speech”. In a televised thirty-minute apology for misusing funds, the Dick attacked his enemies, begged forgiveness, and gave a shout out to his black-and-white Cocker Spaniel whom his cute daughters named Checkers. His wife Pat sat demurely at his side like a mannequin, legs crossed, staring at her husband with a faraway but adoring look. Dick closed his speech with “Let me say this: I don’t believe that I ought to quit because I’m not a quitter. And, incidentally, Pat’s not a quitter. After all, her name was Patricia Ryan and she was born on St. Patrick’s Day, and you know the Irish never quit.” Eerily, on August 8th, 1974, on the eve of his resignation as President, he sang a similar note, “I have never been a quitter” and then he quit.
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ten-minute social media video delineating her split with Trump, once her orange idol, was by any standard well-staged. She looked her most feminine. She calmly sat on her immaculate white living room sofa wearing a virginal white sweater-like top embellished by a shiny crucifix necklace. She accused Trump and his billionaire buddies of taking advantage of 14-year-old girls (hardly newsworthy) and, as a mother of three, added that death threats to her family were the slings and arrows of Trump’s outrageous vitriol. What does her future hold? Who knows? But, no doubt, like General Douglas MacArthur, she will return.
Oh, I forgot to mention the backdrop: a glowing Christmas tree and nearby (no proof) a warm fire blazed to the crackling of chestnuts and slurping of hot chocolate.
Jonathan, I think the timing worked out well for Mamdani in this meetup, when Trump really needed a bright, almost tipsy sense of cheer in the Oval Office that day, in contrast to the Dark Donald who had inhabited him all week. But that’s not to say Mamdani isn’t a “rock star,” as he indeed gives every indication of being. But now comes the hard part…
Robert, I take it you’re among the “No way!” votes regarding the authenticity of Greene’s purported conversion. Fair enough—it would require a supersized benefit of the doubt to take her at her own word. I think I rate it at a slightly higher chance on the authenticity scale than you do, but will still be more surprised than not if it turns out to be real. And thanks for the historical tour through Tricky DickLand, though I’d be remiss not to mention Nixon’s antagonist was only the press, not his boss, who, acting like a normal president of the time, refrained from calling Nixon a traitor or promising to ruin his career.
Excellent post Andrew. I have always viewed MTGs rise as her transactional step to whatever greater heights she desires. I never thought meaningful legislation would be part of her process. Call me cynical! Of course her “mrs Smith Goes to Washington” campaign was sincerely embraced by her constituents, and I do believe she saw herself in that way. Do you think once in Washington though, she grew to realize she too was fooled by MAGA?
Did you see Fareed Zaharia on the Ezra Klein show? Zaharia postulates that our political environment now needs to be framed as “ins” and “outs” vs right or left, or Republican vs Democrat. Bernie has always been ahead of his time.
Thanks for this, Randall. Has led to more thinking. Hard to say whether Greene found herself “fooled by MAGA,” given how deeply she came to be identified as one of the chief faces of the movement, which means she would have had to be fooling herself! But of course that’s always possible for everyone in this life. I think she was also sensitive to constituents who consider the Epstein files as emblematic of Deep State Coverup, so she found herself in a bit of a pickle once it became obvious Trump would not escape mention there. My best guess at moment is there may well be some sincere strands-intentions in her “conversion,” but real wholesale change is really hard, so I don’t expect her to suddenly become a consistent voice of reason and compassion, having suddenly shed her boatloads of harsh conspiracy-driven judgments from the past. Meaning we can probably hold off on the canonization efforts for the moment.
As it happens, I was listening to the Klein-Zakaria conversation the very moment your comment came in (synchronicity at work!). Great conversation, a model for what the podcast form can be. I was most struck by Zakaria’s emphasis on class as being a driving force in modern America, in all the topsy-turvy ways that has shaped our politics. I’ve long felt the woke movement erred in focusing American history on race to the exclusion of just about everything else. No one thing ever explains everything, so what wokeism did (for all its important positive attributes) was leave a huge class of poor, disenfranchised whites out on the fringe of American life asking, “What, I’m privileged?” Trump’s cunning antenna dialed right into that frequency, adding and even encouraging a racist overlay, and it was off to electoral victory in 2016, with enough legs in an under-informed, propaganda-drenched, algorithmic world to bring him back in ’24.
Yeah, Bernie was ahead of his time, but also too old for his time with all his finger-pointing, hoarse shouting from the lectern. My mind conjures say, a smoother-talking, dark-haired 42-year-old Bernie up there on the debate stage with Hillary instead, making the same points but from a different package. I suspect his audience would’ve expanded far beyond the young bros and Smith College girls who formed his core. And what a different world we’d be living in today!
Andrew: Perhaps my bandmates will now reconsider my proposal that the band be renamed, the Marjorie Taylor Greens, which they soundly rejected.(Yes, I know she has an “e” after the n.) Instead, we are now known as the New Skeptics, which would lead one to believe that we are all highly skeptical of her transformation into a purveyor of love, peace and good vibes. Nonetheless, our political discussion, sandwiched into the space between songs during our weekly rehearsal, allowed for the possibility that she, indeed, has had an awakening experience and will soon be breaking bread with AOC and Bernie.
If nothing else, my lifelong mantra, “It never ceases to amaze me that my amazement never ceases” has, once again, been confirmed.
As always, thanks for this thoughtful and insightful piece.
That is a stark raving brilliant band name, Robby. A bit risky of course, some folk perhaps missing the irony and thinking you supporters, but I doubt that would be a widespread view. No, it’s not as transgressive as “Dead Kennedys,” but dandy just the same—and ever so topical. (I doubt she’s disappearing from the American scene anytime soon.) And think of the fun and exposure you could glean inviting her to one of your concerts, in a kind of ultimate, bipartisan, “Singing Across the Aisle.” She’s not without a sense of humor—I bet she’d come! “The New Skeptics?” That’s a religious movement (more like “areligious,” actually), not a band name!
Thanks for checking in here—always good to gab with you, whatever the venue.
Hi Robby, Hey, with so much ass kissing going on today, maybe you should rename the band in honor of our good friend, RIP, Sledge Jensens band THE VANILLA HEMORROIDS.