For what feels like possibly the first time, MAGA Republicans are treating Trump like a lame duck. And surviving.
Let’s start with a stipulation: Marjorie Taylor Greene has seemingly accomplished what few other Republicans have managed or even attempted. In July, she broke with President Donald Trump and the GOP and said she would sign the discharge petition forcing a vote on the Epstein files bill. And then, ahead of this week’s vote, she refused to give in to White House pressure, instead forcing Trump to play defense and ultimately, capitulate completely.
She has rattled Trump’s throne and, as a critic of Trump, is enjoying a strange new respect from unfamiliar political corners.
The resulting breakup between the two has been ugly. She has rattled Trump’s throne and, as a critic of Trump, is enjoying a strange new respect from unfamiliar political corners.
But we should be clear about what the MTG rebellion means — for her, for Trump and for the future of the GOP — and what it does not.
Greene is disillusioned but not transformed; she experienced no blinding light on the road to Damascus. It seems more than a bit naive to regard her now as a “voice of reason and conciliation.”
And while we ought to extend some grace to her, we are not required to embrace full-spectrum amnesia when it comes to one of the more brazen traffickers of conspiracy theories and bigotry. Perhaps now Greene really is experiencing sincere regret. But this is the same MTG who once suggested the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was staged.
She (falsely) suggested that a deadly 2018 fire in California might have been caused by lasers from space. She has (falsely) suggested that 9/11 was a hoax and that Democrats controlled the weather to suppress the GOP vote with hurricanes. She mused openly about a “national divorce” between red and blue states and (without evidence) accused the Clinton family of being involved in murders. She claimed Ruth Bader Ginsburg had been replaced by a body double so that liberals could keep her seat on the Supreme Court.
At this point, it’s hard to tell how much she actually believed and how much was part of her MAGA act. Greene is nothing if not performative, and what we are seeing now is very much a performance, even if her messaging is now somewhat less deplorable.
As Matt Labash notes, it’s a good thing that Greene is finally recognizing that Trump is a “faux-populist conman.” But that has been obvious for the past decade: “This is what happens when the dishonest lead the dumb, and the dumb finally catch onto it. Better late than never. But still, better early than late.”
That is not, however, to say that her break with Trump is not significant. Until now, MAGA has been solidly united behind Trump’s whims. But it feels like the sands are shifting, reflecting the underlying instability of this movement of misfit toys.
The MAGA movement is, after all, built on the erratic character of Donald Trump. It’s a movement built on cultish loyalty, cynical opportunism, lust for power, shared hatreds and a willingness to embrace alternative realities. Trump is the glue. But what comes afterward? The jockeying has already begun. Perhaps a crackup was always inevitable. Indeed, Trump’s split with Greene is only one of the divisions roiling MAGA these days. There is a heated struggle over whether there is room in the GOP for neo-Nazis and their so-called groyper allies. Right-wing stars such as Ben Shapiro and Ted Cruz are blasting Tucker Carlson for his flirtation with antisemitic influencer Nick Fuentes. For the moment, Trump appears to have aligned himself with the Tucker wing, but the conservative Heritage Foundation finds itself bitterly divided over its post-Trump direction. There is also the existential debate over the true meaning of “America First.” Does it mean endless entanglements in the Mideast or wars in South America? Does it mean bailing out Argentina? Or does it only mean what Trump says it means? (“Well, considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides that,” he said earlier this year.) But what happens when he is no longer around to define it?
Charlie Sykes is an MSNBC contributor and the author of the newsletter "To the Contrary." 
