Marjorie Taylor Greene declares MAGA ‘is dead,’ calls it a cult

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said Thursday that the movement she once helped lead has curdled into a “cult” of loyalty to President Trump, delivering the bluntest break yet with the man she spent years defending on Capitol Hill.

Speaking at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Ms. Greene walked through her transformation from one of Mr. Trump’s most combative allies to a Republican who resigned her Georgia seat after their alliance collapsed. She argued that voters who let politicians dodge accountability on campaign promises end up complicit in the same rot she says has consumed the MAGA coalition, saying “they’re liars, and they’re hypocrites, and they’re in a cult.”

Ms. Greene, who left Congress in January after a public rupture with the president over the Jeffrey Epstein files, said she remains committed to the “America First” agenda but described that as a narrower, more disciplined project than the broader MAGA movement Mr. Trump now commands. She said many Republicans privately despise the president but stay silent because they fear the damage a hostile Truth Social post could do to their careers.

She also revisited the personal toll of the feud, saying that after she told Mr. Trump her son had received a death threat, the president texted back that she “deserved it,” according to Newsweek. White House spokesman Davis Ingle dismissed her remarks, telling the outlet that Mr. Trump “is fighting every single day to Make America Great Again” and that Ms. Greene had abandoned her constituents mid-term.

The “traitor” label was already part of their feud by the fall of 2025, as Mr. Trump and Ms. Greene clashed for months over her push to force release of the Epstein files, healthcare policy, and his decision to strike Iran, which she called a betrayal of his campaign promise to keep America out of foreign wars. When she announced her resignation that November, he greeted the news on Truth Social by calling her “Marjorie ’Traitor’ Brown,” writing that he would nonetheless “always appreciate Marjorie, and thank her for her service to our Country.”

Ms. Greene was first elected to represent Georgia’s 14th District in 2020 on a staunchly pro-Trump platform and was stripped of her committee assignments the following year after a bipartisan vote over past inflammatory comments. She has since said she does not see herself aligning with Democrats, insisting her break with the president reflects his shift rather than any change in her own politics.