Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks at a campaign event for Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump at the Johnny Mercer Theater Civic Center on September 24, 2024 in Savannah, Georgia, USA.
Megan Varner | Reuters
Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced Friday that she will resign from her House seat in early January following a dramatic clash with President Donald Trump over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and other issues.
In a video and statement posted to X, Greene cited Trump’s recent attacks on her, including calling her a “traitor” and a “lunatic,” and said her last day in Congress would be Jan. 5.
“Loyalty should go both ways, and since our office is literally ‘representative,’ we should be able to vote our conscience and represent the interests of our district,” wrote Green, who is in the middle of his third term representing Georgia’s 14th District.
“I think it’s great news for the country. It’s a great thing,” President Trump told an ABC News reporter after the announcement.
Greene, 51, was a major supporter of President Trump and a prominent figure in the Republican Party’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, but she has been controversial for promoting conspiracy theories and using extreme rhetoric.
But President Trump has blasted her in recent weeks for supporting legislation that would require the Justice Department to release investigative files on notorious sex offender Epstein.
Greene has also angered Trump by criticizing him for prioritizing meetings with foreign leaders at the expense of caring for the needs of Americans.
President Trump announced last week that he was withdrawing his support and support for Greene, who was first elected in 2020 after losing re-election to former President Joe Biden. She said she would fully support the “right person” challenging her in next year’s Republican primary.
“I have too much self-respect and dignity, and I love my family too much,” Greene said in a statement Friday night. “I have too much self-respect and dignity, and I love my family too much. I don’t want my sweet district to endure a bitter, hate-filled primary against me by a president we all fought for, only to win my election while the Republican Party is likely to lose the midterm elections.”
“And now we’re expected to protect the president from impeachment after he spent tens of millions of dollars on me in a hateful way and tried to destroy me,” Greene said.
“It’s all so ridiculous and completely disingenuous,” she wrote. “I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’. I hope everything goes away and gets better.”
Greene wrote that she “fought harder than almost any other Republican to elect Donald Trump and the Republican Party to power” and left her mother to vote against Trump’s second impeachment by the House of Representatives in 2021 as her father underwent brain surgery.
She said her voting record is “solidly in favor of my party and the president,” with the exception of “a few areas” such as replacing American jobs with H-1B visa recipients, U.S. involvement in foreign wars, and demands for the Epstein files to be released.
“Standing up for American women who were raped at age 14, trafficked, and exploited by the wealthy and powerful should not lead to me being called a traitor or being threatened by the president of the United States for whom I fought.”
U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) speaks alongside former U.S. president and 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump at a campaign event in Rome, Georgia on March 9, 2024.
Ilya Nouberge | AFP | Getty Images
Greene’s resignation could set the stage for her bid to replace Trump in the White House in the 2028 election, and could potentially become the next leader of the MAGA movement after she retires from politics.
However, Greene’s statement acknowledged that her resignation could end not only her career as a lawmaker, but also her role with MAGA.
“If I’m going to be abandoned by MAGA and replaced by neocons, Big Pharma, Big Tech, the military-industrial complex, foreign leaders, and an elite donor class that has no connection to real Americans, so will many ordinary Americans.”
Greene’s resignation will reduce the House Republican caucus’s already razor-thin majority.
There are currently 219 Republican members of Congress and 213 Democratic members of Congress.
But the 14th District is so conservative that it is likely to elect a Republican to replace Greene whenever a special election is held for her seat.
