SACRAMENTO — The first Trump administration was fairly restrained, as it included plenty of old-school Republican adults in key positions. They kept the QAnon types and other crazies at bay. But the January 6 riots and Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election gave a preview of tawdry things to come. His second term doesn’t even try to conceal that it’s based on the “Idiocracy” screenplay.
It’s easy to get dispirited by America’s political death spiral given that the MAGA faithful remain devoted to their leader no matter what new evidence emerges. They accuse critics — even those making calm, policy-oriented critiques — of suffering from a medical condition (Trump Derangement Syndrome). I’m more inclined to believe adherence to Trump’s grievance-based movement is a condition. Like with all viruses, there are signs this one might someday break.
For evidence, I offer none other than U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican from Georgia. Until recently, most pundits have viewed MTG as the epitome of what’s gone wrong with the modern GOP, where there are “no enemies on the right” and conspiracy theories are as relevant as rationally based ones. Even some Trump-friendly writers have rolled their eyes at her statements.
Two years before her election, MTG posted her infamous Facebook comments about space lasers. Remarking on California’s wildfires, she wrote, “[O]ddly there are all these people who have said they saw what looked like lasers or blue beams of light causing the fires.” She referenced Rothschild Inc., and Jerry Brown and speculated about space solar generators. “Could that cause a fire? Hmmm, I don’t know. I hope not!”
As the New York Times reported in 2021, Greene “has repeatedly claimed in multiple videos and social media posts that several school shooting massacres were ‘false flag’ events perpetrated by government officials in an attempt to drum up support for gun control laws.” She’s described Democrats as pedophiles, and initially blamed left-wingers for the Capitol insurrection.
In Congress, she childishly heckled President Joe Biden. Greene has continued to offer meteorological opinions, remarking after Hurricane Helene in 2024 that some unspecified “they” control the weather. A Google search will yield many of her unusual opinions and behaviors. In past days, such opinions would hamper one’s political career, but in this bizarre new world they seem to have greatly bolstered it.
“She has managed in just two years in Congress to accumulate real power, landing on important committees, and influencing the direction of Republican policies,” explained CBS News’ Leslie Stahl in the preamble to her “60 Minutes” interview with Greene in 2023. Since then, she’s made headlines for controversial opinions about Ukraine and Russia, and accusing the Israelis of “genocide.”
Yet this is where the story gets interesting. In recent comments, Greene has sounded like one of the GOP’s more statesmanlike members. After former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her retirement from Congress, Trump said: “The retirement of Nancy Pelosi is a great thing for America” and accused Pelosi of being “evil” and “corrupt.” Trump’s usual incivility roused the MAGA faithful.
But here’s what MTG had to say: “I served under her speakership in my first term of Congress, and I’m very impressed at her ability to get things done. I wish we could get things done for our party, like Nancy Pelosi was able to deliver for her party.” That’s a striking turnabout for someone who once liked an online comment saying “a bullet to the head would be quicker” to remove Pelosi from power. And this wasn’t just a one-off case of normalcy.
Here MTG goes again sounding rather normal: “The cost of health care is killing people. That should be the top issue. Cost of living, electrical bills haven’t gone down, they’ve gone up. They’re dramatically higher, cost of food has gone up.” This has earned her strange new respect from some progressives, and the opprobrium of Trump, who says “she’s lost her way.” Many commentators figure it’s her latest shtick as she possibly prepares for a run for Georgia’s Senate seat.
Who knows? But it’s clear some right-wing voices are straying from the New Right orthodoxy. Writer Rod Dreher, a friend of Vice President J.D. Vance who is known for his harsh critiques of liberal democracy, penned a recent piece that warns: “Anti-Semitism is spreading like a virus among religious conservatives of the Zoomer generation.” This is not a “fringe movement,” he adds, and it “cannot be negotiated with, because it doesn’t have traditional demands. It wants to burn the whole system down.”
I find the current state of political affairs — from the right’s dalliance with racists and anti-Semites to the left’s embrace of open socialists — hard to fathom and more than a little worrisome. So perhaps I’m grasping at straws, but when the virus breaks for some of these once-outlying characters, then maybe there’s hope for the rest of the country.
Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute and a member of the Southern California News Group editorial board. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.