WASHINGTON – Ten months into Donald Trump’s second term, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has positioned herself as a striking critic of the administration’s policies and as a bearer of the “America First” agenda that she believes the president has strayed from, she told NBC News in recent interviews.
Greene, who has long been one of her most outspoken allies, said Trump personally inspired her run for Congress in Georgia in 2022 and described her political identity as rooted in her promise to represent what she calls “America’s forgotten man and woman.”
“That was me,” he recently told Tucker Carlson, recalling how he saw Trump’s campaign as a “referendum to the Republican Party on behalf of the American people… who were so fed up with Washington, DC.”
Now, Greene finds herself at the center of a divide within the Republican Party over how deeply the United States should engage abroad, as polls show the state of the economy is a priority for many Americans and after a round of elections that focused on affordability.
“No one cares about foreign countries. No one cares about the endless number of foreign leaders who come to the White House every week,” Greene told NBC News.
The dispute underscores a broader gap over whether Trump’s presidency still reflects the populist message that fueled his rise. And it reflects a MAGA movement preparing for a future without Trump at the top of the ticket, with the next generation of leaders figuring out where to take the base he built.
On Friday night, just hours after this article was published, Trump decided he had had enough. He took to social media and said he was withdrawing his support.
She said that while America is now the “HOTTEST” country in the world… the only thing I see ‘crazy’ Marjorie doing is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!
Trump also accused her of going to the “far left” and suggested her criticism of him was personal because he didn’t believe she should run for senator or governor. He also said he was open to supporting another Republican rival of Greene in the primary.
Since taking office in January, Trump has made 14 foreign trips, with stops in Italy, the Middle East, Canada, Asia and the United Kingdom, among others, according to an NBC News analysis. In the same period, he visited 15 states in the United States. That includes a trip to Alaska to meet with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and discuss ending the war in Ukraine. At the same point in Trump’s first term, he had visited 27 states. Trump also said he hopes to travel to China early next year to meet with President Xi Jinping. And Bloomberg reported Thursday that he may attend the World Economic Forum, a gathering of the political and business elite, next year in Davos, Switzerland.
“We didn’t elect the president to go out and travel the world and end foreign wars,” Greene said. “We elected the president to stop sending tax money and weapons to foreign wars, so that he no longer participates entirely. Watching foreign leaders come to the White House through a revolving door does not help Americans.”
“One of the big themes of the campaign is that Americans were fed up with foreign wars,” he added. “It’s like, get us out of this.”
While Trump promised during the election campaign to quickly end the wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, the latest national NBC News poll shows that Republicans overwhelmingly believe he has lived up to their expectations on foreign policy (82%), including 66% of Republicans who do not identify with the MAGA movement.
But for Greene and others, it’s a matter of priorities; They argue that the economy should be the clear focus.
“It’s not that I want a very different foreign policy,” said one Trump ally with foreign policy acumen, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “You just need to send more aggressive messages to focus their attention on young Americans and the things they still have trouble getting and the problems they have.”
Greene has stepped up her criticism as foreign visits have continued, saying Trump’s attention abroad “is doing nothing to solve the problems that really plague vulnerable segments of our population, especially young people.”
She has criticized meetings with leaders such as Argentina’s Javier Milei, whom she described as seeking “a rescue,” and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who she says arrived “with his hands outstretched begging for more.”
In response to Trump’s repudiation of her on Friday night, Greene tweeted that she wished Trump would put more energy into addressing economic issues and less into fighting the release of files related to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“It’s really amazing how hard he is fighting to keep Epstein’s files from coming to light and for it to really get to this level,” he wrote. “But really most Americans wish he would fight as hard to help the forgotten men and women of America who are fed up with wars and foreign causes, who are bankrupted trying to feed their families, and are losing hope of ever achieving the American dream.”
Ryan Girdusky, a Republican consultant who helped run a pro-JD Vance super PAC in the 2022 Ohio Senate race, said it’s no surprise that the president has shown interest in cementing his global legacy.
“When presidents don’t have to run again, they do a lot of foreign policy trips,” Girdusky said. “They do a lot of things for legacy. And Trump’s Middle East issues are probably the most important of any president since Nixon.”
The Trump ally said that while he supports Trump raising awareness about, say, Christians who are being persecuted in Nigeria, “if we get to the point where we actually start talking about taking military action there, then I think we’ve lost our way.”
Conservatives have also questioned recent U.S. attacks in the Pacific and Caribbean and whether Trump risks plunging the United States into deeper conflict. The president, in October, denied that he was considering strikes within Venezuela.
In an article last month, conservative journalist Christopher Caldwell questioned the buildup of U.S. military forces and weaponry off the coast of Venezuela, asking, “What does Trump think he’s doing?”
Carlson, on the recent show with Greene, outlined what he said were the five pillars of MAGA, or the founding principles of the Trump administration. The first, he said, is to put America first, describing it as the idea “that the country operates on behalf of its owners, the citizens of that country.” Other pillars have a similar focus on the homeland, including a secure border, an end to foreign wars and a “real” domestic economy that is not dependent on globalization. A fifth calls to protect freedom of expression.
“You can’t have a global country,” Carlson said, arguing that this is “a point Trump made time and time again.”
Asked about Greene’s recent comments following a meeting that morning with Syrian interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, Trump said Monday that he has to “see the presidency as a global situation, not a local one.”
“When you’re president, you really have to watch the world, because they’re going to drag you into it, otherwise they’re going to drag you into a world war,” Trump said.
“You know, it’s easy to say, ‘Oh, don’t worry about the world.’ But the world is becoming our biggest customer,” he continued. “The world is… the world was on fire, and we could have been on fire very easily if we didn’t have a president who knew what he was doing.”
Of Greene, a longtime ally, he said: “I think he’s lost his way.”
In response to Trump’s comments, Greene told NBC News this week: “I’m America first, just America. Unconditional.”
When asked if she had spoken to him to clear things up, she said: “No, I haven’t spoken to him. He 100% hasn’t changed.”
The crash occurs in a context of a difficult real estate market and increasing cost of living. According to a new report from the National Association of Realtors, only about 1 in 5 homes sold in the year ending in June was purchased by a first-time buyer. Greene pointed to her own adult children (ages 22, 26 and 28) as examples of what she sees as a generation facing declining prospects.
“They don’t think they’ll ever be able to buy a house,” he said. “They were promised: If you go to college, you’ll get a great job. That doesn’t exist. That’s not reality.”
In a recent interview with Fox News, Trump talked about affordability but appeared to downplay Americans’ concerns about economic anxiety, calling the issue a “Democrat scam” and suggesting that polls showing it was a priority for voters were “false.”
Greene’s message has resonated with other members of the party, particularly after a series of disappointing Republican election results this month. And he has received plaudits across the political spectrum for his willingness to take direct aim at his own party, including during a recent appearance on “The View.”
Greene dismissed speculation that she is positioning herself for a presidential run in 2028, saying she is focused on her district.
Analysts say the tension reflects the broader evolution of the Trump movement.
Justin Logan, a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute, said that as long as Americans do not feel the direct costs of foreign commitments, dissent within the movement may remain limited. “If they can win by arguing that they have been successful and cheap, they will be able to push back against their critics,” he said of the administration.
