The movement has been particularly riven over Trump’s flip-flop on releasing emails related to the case of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
US President Donald Trump called Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation “great news from the country”. Photo / Getty Images
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.
In a phone conversation with a reporter for American broadcaster ABC News, Trump was quoted as saying Greene’s resignation is “great news from the country”.
He added Greene hadn’t given him notice but “it doesn’t matter, you know but I think it’s great. I think she should be happy”.
‘A two-way street’
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, Trump 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 next 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 sceptic.
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 she is lining up for her own presidential bid in 2028, although she dismissed it as “baseless gossip”.
Her resignation comes halfway through her third term in the US House of Representatives. In her resignation speech, she did not say what she would do next.
“Her split with Trump made her an even bigger national sensation,” observed the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Georgia’s biggest newspaper, in its coverage of her resignation.
Greene said she “fought harder than almost any other elected Republican to elect Donald Trump and Republicans”, spending “millions” of her own money along the way – comparing herself with “establishment Republicans who secretly hate him and who stabbed him in the back”.
“My voting record has been solidly with my party and the President,” Greene said. “Loyalty should be a two-way street.”
– Agence France-Presse