Marjorie Taylor Greene torches House GOP in resignation announcement
WASHINGTON (CN) — Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, once regarded as a key player in President Donald Trump’s political coalition, will resign from Congress in January, she announced Friday evening.
And in a message to her constituents, Greene — recently cast aside by the president — sharply criticized House Speaker Mike Johnson and her Republican colleagues, and said that Congress had been “sidelined” one year into Trump’s second term in office.
“Americans are used by the Political Industrial Complex of both Political Parties, election cycle after election cycle, in order to elect whichever side can convince Americans to hate the other side more,” the Georgia congresswoman wrote in a statement posted to X Friday night. “No matter which way the political pendulum swings, Republican or Democrat, nothing ever gets better for the common American man or woman.”
Greene, elected in 2020 to represent Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, was for years a figurehead of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement and one of his staunchest supporters. But in recent weeks the president’s opinion of her has faltered, as she broke with Republicans over the monthlong government shutdown and supported efforts to force the Trump administration to release files related to the Jeffery Epstein investigation.
Trump has called Greene a “traitor” and vowed to support a primary challenger.
The congresswoman on Friday reminded her constituents of her longtime support for the president, recalling that she left her father, undergoing surgery for brain cancer, in 2021 to vote against Trump’s second impeachment. But she said she would rather leave Congress than endure a “hurtful and hateful” primary challenge.
“I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’ hoping it all goes away and gets better,” Greene wrote.
The Georgia Republican also took aim at Johnson, saying that she raged against him and her House colleagues for “refusing to proactively work diligently to pass a plan to save American health care and protect Americans from outrageous overpriced and unaffordable health insurance policies.”
She accused House lawmakers on both sides of the aisle of forcing a “disgusting political drama” on the American people.
And Greene also lamented the limited role of Congress under a second Trump administration, which has favored sweeping executive action that has largely ignored lawmakers’ role in policymaking.
“[W]ith almost one year into our majority, the legislature has been mostly sidelined, we endured an 8-week shut down wrongly resulting in the House not working for the entire time, and we are entering campaign season which means all courage leaves and only safe campaign re-election mode is turned on,” she wrote.
Greene offered a sharp rebuke of the two-party system, which she said is “ripping this country apart,” and urged Americans to reject it. “I’ll be here by their side to rebuild it,” she said. “Until then I’m going back to the people I love, to live life to the fullest as I always have, and look forward to a new path ahead.”
The congresswoman’s last day in office will be Jan. 5, she said.