In another sign that the MAGA coalition is cracking, President Donald Trump has lost the full backing of one his staunchest supporters.
Georgia’s firebrand Republican congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, is not happy with the White House’s interventionist foreign policy. She believes Trump is more concerned with foreign matters than an “America First” president should be. And she’s been talking about it quite often.
When a CNN reporter asked Trump about it on Monday, he said Greene “has lost her way.”
On Monday, Greene wrote on social media, “I would really like to see nonstop meetings at the WH on domestic policy not foreign policy and foreign country’s leaders. Start by hauling in the health insurance company’s executives and let’s start formulating our Republican plan to save America from Obamacare and ACA tax credits that have skyrocketed the cost of health insurance!”
The context of her statement was Trump’s meeting with Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, whom the United States considered an international terrorist up until last week.
Election Results
Greene made similar comments indicating her dissatisfaction with the administration last week. She even blamed the poor GOP showing in last Tuesday’s elections on Trump’s neglect of his America First focus. She told CNN:
I believe in America First policies. That’s why I campaigned for President Trump and have supported him for as long as I have. And I do support him. But I want all of my colleagues to come through in action in supporting America First policies. I think the American people showed that on Tuesday. You’re not going to convince them to go to the polls and vote by bailing out Argentina. And you’re not going to convince them to go to the polls and vote by continuing to fund foreign wars and foreign countries and foreign causes. You’re going to get them to go to the polls and vote when you show up to work and actually fix the problems that they face every single day.
High Prices
Among the problems Americans face every day are high food prices, high housing costs, high automobile prices, high healthcare costs, and high energy prices. It’s true Trump inherited all of them, but his policies are widely suspected of perpetuating these high costs.
Greene has been one of the few Republicans to call out the president’s inaccurate claims that the cost of living is going down. Trump said as early as late last week that “every price is down.” Except for gas prices, this isn’t true. Americans who do their own grocery shopping and pay their own heating and cooling bills know this. The data show this as well. The federal Consumer Price Index says that overall prices were 1.7 percent higher in September than they were in January.
In that same interview with CNN, Greene echoed the complaints of common Americans. She said :
I go to the grocery store myself. Grocery prices remain high. Energy prices are high. My electricity bills are higher here in Washington, D.C., at my apartment, and they’re also higher at my house in Rome, Georgia, higher than they were a year ago. Affordability is a problem, and I’m a mom. My kids are 22, 26, and 28. That’s the generation I worry about the most, and they’re having a very hard time.
“Lost Her Way”
The same CNN reporter who talked to Greene after Tuesday’s elections mentioned her growing disillusionment to the president. The reporter told Trump that Greene “said that she would rather see you focus on nonstop domestic policy meetings at the White House instead of nonstop foreign policy meetings.” Then she asked, “What’s your response to her saying that, and also saying that grocery prices are up and not down, as you say?”
Trump responded, “I don’t know what happened to Marjorie. She’s a nice woman, but I don’t know what happened. She’s lost her way, I think.”
The president then defended the attention he’s dedicated to foreign policy as part of his role. He said:
I have to view the presidency as a worldwide situation, not locally. We could have a world that’s on fire, where wars come to our shores very easily, if you had a bad president. We had a horrible president and we ended up with Russia-Ukraine. And we ended up with other disasters.
Trump further defended his foreign policy by saying that he “put out” eight wars and that we stopped sending American money to Ukraine, which is mostly true. According to the Kiel Institute, American military aide to Ukraine didn’t stop fully flowing until after June of this year.
America First
One of Trump’s top bragging points during his 2024 campaign was that he had kept America out of foreign wars during his first presidency and that he would do it again. This was especially appealing to his base, as well as to many independents who joined the large MAGA tent in 2024.
Trump’s America First focus is what inspired Greene to run for office in 2020. The idea of a president who actually prioritizes the needs of Americans over anything else was something she perceived as unique and profoundly appealing. That’s what she saw in his first tenure, and it’s what fueled her fervent support that lasted up until recently.
But for Greene, as well as for many Americans, Trump 2.0 is not like Trump 1.0. This administration carried out a bombing campaign on Iran that many suspect was done on behalf of a foreign nation. Multiple reports corroborate the notion that Israeli intelligence saying Iran was actively building nuclear weapons contradicted U.S. intelligence, and that Trump’s decision to bomb Iran was based on Israel’s analysis.
Interventionism
Trump has also never retreated from the debacle in Eastern Europe. He recently got more involved in the matter by leveling sanctions on Russia. The move came after months of failed attempts by the president to mediate peace between the two countries. Since leveling the sanctions, relations with the Russians have only grown colder while chances of peace remain elusive. This has prompted concern that the Eurocrats will eventually manage to draw the United States into a hot war against Russia, which many suspect is the globalists’ goal.
And now the Trump White House appears to be planning military intervention in Venezuela, despite what it says out loud. There has been a massive military buildup in the Caribbean lately. The U.S. military has reactivated a Cold War-era naval base in Puerto Rico and deployed thousands of troops. “Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Ceiba, Puerto Rico — closed since 2004 — became operational again in September when F-35B stealth fighters, Marine Corps helicopters and heavy transport aircraft began using the facility’s 11,000-foot runway,” Military.com reported last week. “The base sits approximately 500 miles from Venezuela’s coast.”
MAGA Divided
Greene now joins the small group of Republicans who publicly disagree with the Trump administration’s foreign policy. She joins the ranks of Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky) and Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky), who have taken a lot of ire from Trump for their principled stances.
The concern over the administration’s foreign meddling and foreign influence is one of the main issues tearing the MAGA coalition apart. In the commentariat realm, the noninterventionist wing is led by Tucker Carlson. Currently, there is an intense effort by the Establishment wing of the party, led by pundits Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro, as well as legislators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Randy Fine (R-Fla.) to discredit Carlson. The supposed reason is because he interviewed Nick Fuentes, a popular fringe figure who has made many openly racist statements. But many suspect the real reason for such a concerted effort against Carlson is his longstanding criticism of the administration’s interventionist policies. Interventionist foreign policy is necessary to the buildup of a world government.
Founding Wisdom
To be clear, nonintervention is the policy that was prescribed by America’s Founding Fathers. George Washington advised in his Farewell Address that America should “observe good faith and justice towards all Nations” and “cultivate peace and harmony with all.” He also warned against entangling alliances. He said, “Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the art of influence on the other.”
Years later, before becoming president, John Quincy Adams said that America should never go abroad “in search of monsters to destroy.” He warned that doing so would draw the nation into a mess that would be hard to get out of: “She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own … she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.”
The good news is that neoconservative foreign policy is finally being criticized as it should. It has led to the death of thousands of Americans and the loss of unknown amounts of money. It has cost the American people far more than it has benefited them, and it has destabilized entire regions of the planet and created more enemies. Perhaps the defection of one of his hitherto most loyal supporters will awaken President Trump from his neocon stupor and embrace the America First foreign policy that energized so many to vote for him.
