‘Welcome to the Club’ Say Former Trump Allies as MTG Joins Those Who Ran Afoul of the President

Former aides and allies of President Trump are welcoming Marjorie Taylor Greene to the growing coterie of political figures who have seen their careers take a dive after running afoul of the president.“As I like to say … welcome to the under the bus club,” Mr. Trump’s one-time lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, said in a CNN interview shortly after the Georgia Republican announced she will step down from Congress in January.“She is joining a very large group of people, myself as the charter membership director, welcome to the club.”Other notable members of that club include Liz Cheney, the Republican congresswoman and daughter of Vice President Cheney, who lost a primary in her home state of Wyoming after voting to impeach Mr. Trump, and Vice President Pence, who lost Mr. Trump’s support after certifying the result of the 2020 election.Other prominent Republicans having fun with Ms. Greene’s decision to step down included Meghan McCain, daughter of the late Arizona senator John McCain, who became an outspoken Trump critic after the president disparaged her father’s military service.“I knew she was going to be the next cohost of The View!” Ms. McCain quipped on X, referring to the ABC talk show frequently criticized by conservatives for its perceived liberal bias. Ms. Greene did in fact make a recent appearance on the show, where she chatted amiably with the hosts.Mr. Trump, for his part, wasted little time reacting to the stunning announcement, saying, “I think it’s great news for the country. It’s great.”Ms. Greene’s announcement also brought renewed attention to tensions within Mr. Trump’s MAGA movement, which is divided over how to respond to far-right social media influencer Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and self-avowed antisemite.“Marjorie Greene was forced out of Congress by Donald Trump for criticizing Israel and voting to release the Epstein Files,” Mr. Fuentes posted Saturday on X. “In other words, Trump destroyed his biggest loyalist for putting America First. This is why I didn’t vote. MAGA is dead.”In her resignation announcement Friday evening, Ms. Greene said she is done working in a legislative branch that has been “sidelined” by the president, whom she no longer wishes to fight.She and the president became increasingly estranged in recent weeks after she started raising concerns about the cost of living, foreign entanglements, and her party’s lack of commitment to putting Americans — and Americans only — first. She said she is ready to leave Washington, D.C., in the wake of that infighting. “I’ve always represented the common American man and woman as a member of the House of Representatives which is why I’ve always been despised in Washington DC and never fit in,” Ms. Greene said in a statement posted to X on Friday evening. She says that Congress has been “sidelined,” seemingly in favor of ceding power to the executive branch, though she does not blame Mr. Trump explicitly. “I have fought harder than almost any other elected Republican to elect Donald Trump and Republicans to power, traveling the country for years, spending millions of my own money, missing precious time with my family that I can never get back, and showing up in places like outside the New York Courthouse in Collect Pond Park against a raging leftist mob as Trump faced Democrat lawfare,” Ms. Greene says. “Meanwhile most of the Establishment Republicans, who secretly hate him and who stabbed him in the back and never defended him against anything, have all been welcomed in after the election,” she added. Ms. Greene — who was elected in her deep-red district in 2020 and quickly became one of the party’s most prolific fundraisers and spokeswomen — says her constituents are struggling, contrary to the president’s statements. “No matter which way the political pendulum swings, Republican or Democrat, nothing ever gets better for the common American man or woman,” she said Friday. Ms. Greene wrote that she never changed, despite the pressures of Washington — including the very pressures that came from Mr. Trump himself. She said that she stood by him in order to codify his executive orders, pass his agenda, and defend him from her Democratic colleagues in Congress. Still, she says that Mr. Trump has not returned the kind of loyalty that she has offered him over the last five years. “Loyalty should be a two way street and we should be able to vote our conscience and represent our district’s interest because our job title is literally, ‘Representative,’” Ms. Greene says. She says that while the president’s criticisms are “hurtful,” Ms. Greene says her “heart remains filled with joy” for the work she has done and the family that she has. “I have never valued power, titles, or attention in spite of all the wrong assumptions about me. I do not cling to those things because they are meaningless and empty traps that hold too many people in Washington,” Ms. Greene says. She says she has “too much” self-respect and dignity to continue serving in the House. Ms. Greene says her last day will be January 5, 2026. “It’s all so absurd and completely unserious. I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’ hoping it all goes away and gets better,” she writes. Once Ms. Greene resigns in January, the math in the House of Representatives could tighten significantly. Voters in Tennessee’s seventh congressional district will go to the polls in December to choose a new representative after their congressman resigned over the summer. Democrats have high hopes that they can win that race, bringing their House minority up to 214 members. In January, a deep-blue Texas district will elect a new representative. The runoff primary earlier this month saw two Democrats advance, meaning that it is certain that a Democrat will fill the seat once the special election occurs on January 31, 2026. That election will bring the House Democratic caucus up to 215 members strong, should they prevail in Tennessee. If that scenario plays out, then Speaker Mike Johnson will have a one-seat margin of error for the rest of the 119th Congress to pass the president’s legislative agenda.This article is an expanded and updated version of a story published earlier on Saturday.____________Correction: Georgia is the state represented by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. An earlier edition misnamed the state.

‘Welcome to the Club’ Say Former Trump Allies as MTG Joins Those Who Ran Afoul of the President

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