Rep.
Marjorie Taylor Greene blasts Trump’s Epstein focus
In an
interview, Greene said if Republicans don’t pivot to affordability quickly, the
midterm elections are Democrats’ to win.
By Alex
Gangitano
11/14/2025
10:00 AM EST
Donald
Trump says Marjorie Taylor Greene has lost her way.
Greene
disagrees.
The
Republican firebrand, once one of the president’s strongest Capitol Hill
allies, says it’s the president who is off course. He shouldn’t be trying to
stop the release of the Epstein files, when so many of his most ardent
followers are struggling to pay the bills.
“It’s
insanely the wrong direction to go,” Greene told POLITICO. “The five-alarm fire
is health care and affordability for Americans. And that’s where the focus
should be.”
As the
Trump administration struggles with how to respond to voters’ worries around
rising prices, Greene is banging the drum that the Republican Party needs to be
laser focused on the economy instead of getting sidetracked, in her eyes, by
foreign crises and trying to block the release of documents related to the late
convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The
Georgia Republican, who has become a rare Trump critic within the GOP, has
grown increasingly critical of how the president is handling the issue of
affordability, issuing a warning ahead of 2026:
“This is
me wanting my party to do something, to win and do something good for the
American people. It’s not me going against, it’s me pushing my party to say,
this is what we need to be doing,” Greene said. “Not only is it the right thing
to do for America, but if you want to win the midterms, this is what we need to
be doing, deliver for Americans if we want them to send us back in 2026.”
Greene’s
remarks come after CNN reported Wednesday that Trump administration officials
called Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) to the White House Situation Room to
discuss her signature on the discharge petition forcing the Justice Department
to release the Epstein files. Trump reportedly tried to reach out to Rep. Nancy
Mace (R-S.C.), another signatory. Greene is the third Republican who signed
Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) discharge petition, which now has the 218 required
signatures to move forward and is expected to come to the House floor for a
vote next week.
“Releasing
the Epstein files is the easiest thing in the world,” she said. “Just release
it all, let the American people sort through every bit of it, and, you know,
support the victims. That’s just like the most common sense, easiest thing in
the world. But to spend any effort trying to stop it makes — it just doesn’t
make sense to me.”
A White
House official bashed Greene’s criticism over the Epstein discharge petition
effort and minimizing affordability concerns.
“Complaining
about a lack of focus on healthcare affordability while actively working to
advance a gigantic Democrat distraction that has nothing to do with bettering
the lives of everyday Americans is an unusual choice,” spokesperson Abigail
Jackson said. “The White House is focusing on lowering costs for all Americans,
and is eager to work with both parties in order to advance legislative
priorities to address these issues.”
Trump on
Monday was dismissive of Greene’s recent suggestion that there should be
nonstop meetings at the White House on domestic policy and not foreign policy.
“I don’t
know what happened to Marjorie,” he told reporters. “Nice woman. But I don’t
know what happened, she’s lost her way, I think.”
In an
interview Thursday, Greene wouldn’t discuss whether the president has made any
effort to patch up their relationship. She confirmed that the White House
didn’t reach out to her about taking her name off the discharge petition on
Wednesday like they did, unsuccessfully, with Mace and Boebert.
Trump
publicly warned all Republicans against working with Democrats to force a vote
in the House on releasing the Epstein files.
“Only a
very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap,” Trump said on Truth
Social. “There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any
Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our Country, and
fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats!”
The
falling out between Trump and Greene comes as the Republican Party is trying to
figure out its identity after the president leaves office.
Greene
has called out Trump for not being focused on an America First agenda — the
main pillar of the MAGA movement. She has criticized the administration for
ignoring the high cost of living and focusing instead on foreign policy, while
Trump has repeatedly bragged that among his biggest achievements in his second
term has been ending multiple wars abroad.
She
blamed last week’s bruising elections for Republicans on her party
disenfranchising the America First agenda and she said she was against
“bringing any foreign leader that is a terrorist or oversees killing innocent
people into our country and into the Oval Office” after Trump hosted Syrian
President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“I’m just
speaking for myself, I’m America first. I am 100 percent for my country, no
other country,” Greene told POLITICO. “That’s what a lot of people thought they
voted for in 2024. … It’s a failure of our Republican majority in the House and
the Republican majority in the Senate, if we aren’t legislating that way and
making that happen.”
Greene
said that if she had to call the midterms today, Democrats would win.
“I don’t
see how we win the midterms on the course that we’ve been set on so far,” she
said.
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