Transcription
[laughter] All right, my friend. Thank you much. So, let's bring in MS Now political analyst and chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, Peter Baker, and MS Now political contributor and chief political reporter for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Greg Bluestein.
Uh, we're going to start with you, Greg, because this is your hood. This is what you cover. And in this morning, a Truth Social post, Trump accused the congresswoman of resigning because she'd lose a primary to a candidate that he would endorse. Is that the case? Is this a political calculation by MTG? Is it not a principled stance or is she just sick of the external issues that come with being in Congress right now, like safety, if you make the wrong people angry?
>> Alex, that's such a good question. I'm I'm here in Margie Taylor Green's district in Northwest Georgia right now where I interviewed a lot of voters this morning who were just as shocked as as those lawmakers that that Kevin spoke with. And you know, to me, she was always going to be the favorite to win re-election. Georgia Republicans have a tendency, have a knack, have a history of voting for imperiled Republican incumbents, even who those who are who are uh who are opposed by Donald Trump, right? Governor Brian Kemp, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and even in 2022, um two uh Republican candidates running for open seats in Congress who did not have Trump's endorsement won over Trump-backed rivals. So, you have to think that Margie Taylor Green was in really good position to win. And there's not there's not some sort of, you know, a consensus opposition candidate right now. I just think she was frankly tired of it and and as she said and as Kevin just mentioned, this whole battered wife syndrome, she didn't want to win and then spend the next two years in office defending everything Donald Trump did and getting questioned about everything that the president said or did about her.
>> Yeah. And I got the sense she she thought it was desperately unfair given the way she has supported him from the get-go on pretty much everything. So Peter, because of that, this is a relationship you would have never predicted would deteriorate to this level. And apparently Green's announcement, you know, as we're hearing here, it came as a surprise to Speaker Johnson, President Trump as well. Did they really have no idea she was going to step down? Do you know anything about that?
>> Not that I know of. I I don't know of anybody who had any uh prior indication of that. It certainly came out of the blue on a Friday night, like you said. Um, none of us, I guess, has much of a social life, but the uh, [laughter] but the fact is that you're seeing something that's a change in uh, what we've seen before. But before we saw members of Congress leaving Congress out of opposition to Donald Trump, but from the other side of the political equation, from the Republican establishment, the people like Jeff Flake and Bob Corker and and so on and so forth. Liz Cheney was was defeated in a primary. These are regular Republicans, conventional Republicans, conservative Republicans, but not MAGA Republicans. Now, with Marjorie Taylor Greene, you're seeing something different, right? You're seeing a MAGA Republican who had been a very strong ally of the president calling it quits out of either intimidation or sick and tired of it or whatever whatever motivation we want to ascribe to it. And that's a really interesting change. It's it's MAGA versus MAGA rather than MAGA versus the establishment.
But just to confirm, Peter, typically, traditionally, if someone's going to resign, you do tell if if you know the House Majority Leader or Minority Leader, whoever your party designate is. Okay, just to make sure on that one.
So, Greg, um, on one level, she is divide Trump and she's been arguably on the right side of some issues, including Epstein and affordability, but you don't know what is real versus what's performative with her. Who is the real MTG?
I mean, that's a question we could write a book about right now, right? Who is the real Marjorie Taylor Greene who has dominated Georgia politics and really in in one sense national politics for the last 5 years? And the other big question is what does she do next, right? Uh we know that she opted out of a gubernatorial run in a challenge against Senator Jon Ossoff, perhaps the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent on the ballot next year. But at the same time, you know, we've heard speculation that she could aim even higher, 2028. And we've also talked we've heard talk about her, you know, becoming a media personality, trying to broaden her influence outside of politics to do other things. So that's the big question here in Northwest Georgia that I cannot stop getting from from voters and from politicians is what does she do next?
>> Yeah, I've had that question all through the night practically.
Um, so Peter, how will Green's resignation affect the balance in the in the House? I mean, is the White House concerned about diminishing the GOP's very narrow majority?
Well, [snorts] of course, every single seat matters when you are this tight. Right now, obviously, as you're showing right there, the the Republicans can only afford to lose uh three uh three votes on any particular issue, assuming Democrats are united on the other side before they lose control uh of the floor. So, it makes it much harder to get anything done. Uh and it's going to be a few months until you can have a special election to replace her. Uh and we do have these three other vacancies out there right now. So, it's always a very volatile thing for Speaker Mike Johnson to be trying to manage this very very uh narrow majority of these guys. Having said that, what's really fascinating is this has not been a Congress that has actually done that much. Right? This is a president who's using mostly using his executive power to accomplish the things he wants to do with with only a few exceptions. He really hasn't asked Congress to do things for him. He hasn't used Congress to create new laws and new programs uh or change programs or get rid of programs even uh in a way that a new president typically does. So, you know, what he wants in terms of the House is mainly, you know, a body that doesn't get in his way. Uh and that's that seems to be where Mike Johnson is is focused on right now.
Let me ask you, Peter, you touched on it, but um talking about the the fractions uh within MAGA right now. First of all, is Marjorie Taylor Greene poised to be, if she gets back into politics, is she poised to be the leader of MAGA? And do you think that could be why the president said he hopes she gets back in? Because he's going to go and we can assume that what he has built he will want to be continued by someone. Do you think he thinks she could be the leader of MAGA?
>> Well, possibly. Certainly a leader, a leading voice of MAGA. Could she actually win the presidential nomination 2028 against, you know, JD Vance? That seems harder to see. She would be an underdog. Uh, but you never know. What's interesting about Trump's um, you know, mixed uh, reactions, right, on online, he's saying she's a traitor, you know, trashing her in that video clip you showed, a little bit more gracious, a little bit more measured in his reaction. Well, look, with Trump, you know, there are very few permanent enemies. A lot of people who fall out with him or he falls out with suddenly show back up again. How do we know that? Well, it was just a few months ago that Elon Musk fell out with Trump and he was the one who raised the Epstein matters. He was the one who went online saying Trump is acting the way he is because he's afraid of Epstein. Well, he set off quite a quite a landslide there. And guess what? Where was Elon Musk this week? Back at the White House in a tux for, you know, a lavish dinner for the Saudi Crown Prince. So, with Trump, you never know. I mean, he's not breaking ties with her in a permanent way. You could always see them finding a way to get back together potentially.
Greg, I want to ask the same question to you regarding um if MTG does get back into politics. Does she see herself as a potential leader of MAGA?
>> Uh she might, right? Um no one here is counting her out of a return from politics. Whether or not Donald Trump is going to kind of put out the red carpet for her remains to be seen, but clearly from, you know, he made those statements um on air, but clearly from those tweets, those those social media posts, he said he still called her Marjorie "Trader" Brown, right? Um, so he has not kind of backed off that messaging. But look, she has universal name recognition in in in Georgia and she's still beloved by many many people in her district and uh and across the state. So she could still become a leader of the MAGA movement here.
What do you, in terms of what you heard Greg out there talking with her constituents? What's the most remarkable thing you heard today?
>> Well, a lot of them want her to run for governor in Georgia. Um, she had ruled that out. It doesn't seem likely that she runs for Senate given her disdain for the chamber. She's she's attacked the Senate over and over again, recent messaging, but there is still a race for governor. Trump has already endorsed Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones. There's two other well-known Republicans in the race. Um, but there are a lot of folks who think that she could just switch over to the governor's race. There's still time before a uh qualifying early next year. So, there's a lot of talk and buzz up here about that.