From Marjorie Taylor Greene to Epstein: The Fracturing of the MAGA Movement

Now to Washington, where the full release of the Epstein files looms, revealing ever-growing rifts in Donald Trump's MAGA base.

The president's friendship with the convicted sex offender is causing frustrations to boil over.

Will Sommer is a senior reporter at The Bulwark who has spent years following the MAGA movement, and he speaks to Michel Martin about what he's been observing.

Thanks, Christiane.

Will Sommer, thank you so much for joining us.

You've been writing extensively, I mean for years in fact, about different strands of the conservative movement, the MAGA movement, as we call it.

This has been a very pivotal couple of weeks and months.

I think the signature issue that I think a lot of people have focused on is a member of Congress named Marjorie Taylor Greene, a very conservative member of Congress, some might say a fringe member, but a person who's moved into leadership because of her close association with Trump, has had a very public breakup with him to the point where she is resigning from Congress come January.

How do you read that?

What happened here?

And first of all, what happened with Marjorie Taylor Greene and the president?

But the second bigger question obviously is does this speak to something else?

Is this unique to those two and their relationship or just to speak to some bigger issue in the MAGA movement?

Yeah, I mean, I think the key thing to understand here is that Marjorie Taylor Greene was initially sort of like the the ideal of a hardcore Trump supporter.

We know she was a big believer in the QAnon conspiracy theory, which basically posits Trump as sort of like a messianic figure coming to save the world.

As she gets to Congress, she's very supportive of Trump.

But in recent months, she has been more critical of Trump, saying, for example, over the government shutdown, she was critical of Republican efforts to end Obamacare subsidies.

And I think especially their big break came on Trump's attempts to withhold the Jeffrey Epstein files.

And so I think in some ways I think this is personal.

She was reportedly told not to run for Senate or to run for governor in Georgia.

And so I think, you know, she had some anger there with the White House.

But also I think she is sort of a hardcore Trump supporter who's become disappointed with the direction of the administration.

Is it mainly about the Epstein files or are there other things?

I think it's primarily about the Epstein files and this broader sense that Marjorie Taylor Greene has of almost being too Trumpist for Trump himself.

This idea that she feels that he's abandoned the populist roots of the MAGA movement or what it was supposed to be.

I mean, she's very isolationist.

She says she's America first and she's been critical of Trump, for example, for supporting Israel, for bombing Iran.

And so she almost seems to be saying, you know, this is not what I voted for, what I got into politics to support, and so that's why I'm going to leave, particularly now that Trump is calling her a traitor.

And speaking of that, I mean, this current administration initiative in Venezuela, you know, bombing these these boats for on the basis of no evidence being presented that these are drug traffickers as the administration insists they are.

That was one of the issues that Marjorie Taylor Greene and others who agree with her object to.

What they consider this kind of adventurism in foreign affairs that doesn't seem to be clearly tied to a specific American interest.

Is this the kind of thing that causes people to question that they're getting what they voted for?

I think Trump's aggression towards Venezuela and these attacks on these supposed drug boats in the Caribbean, I think really play into this kind of disaffection a lot of people, particularly people Trump brought into the Republican Party, are feeling.

I mean, I think the Iraq War in particular really left deep wounds in the Republican Party, this idea that there was this foreign adventuring that had had this huge blowback and it turned into this disaster, both in Iraq and for the United States.

So there's been this kind of reluctance to engage in these sort of pointless wars.

Yet, I mean, it's been striking to me, I mean, as someone who obviously lived through the run-up to Iraq, you know, I remember there was much more of a sense of kind of like getting the American public on board, convincing people.

There really seems to be none of that in this case.

There really seems to be, you know, when they're asked, well, why are we threatening to go to war in Venezuela?

You know, there's really no effort to make the case from the administration.

And so I think for people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, you know, the whole idea of America First, a lot of that was, you know, we're not going to get involved in these reckless wars for no reason.

They're looking at that and they're saying, you know, I thought Trump was going to be this peace president, you know, and they're seeing that that's not the case.

So some people have looked at this and called it the beginnings of a kind of a fracturing.

Some analysts have even called it kind of a civil war.

You don't think that?

Marjorie Taylor Greene is really emblematic because she is such a high-profile Republican figure and someone a lot of people know.

And, you know, look, I think she is potentially a warning sign for the White House that you have these people who should be devoted Republicans.

I mean, these are not moderates, certainly in Marjorie Taylor Greene's case, by any stretch.

But she's saying, you know, I'm getting fed up with Trump with the second term.

I don't want anything to do with it.

And I think there are a lot of people like that.

I think there are people in the grassroots, and I think there are people in right-wing media as well, who are unhappy with how the second term is going and are sort of looking towards 2028, trying to position themselves, and realizing that sort of the Trump era of the Republican Party is not going to last forever.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Margie Taylor Greene has said some really interesting things in various interviews that she's done.

She says that she regrets her role and sort of the toxicity of this political moment.

As to the question of her denouncing sort of U.S.

involvement in Israel and the Gaza war, she's one of the few, if not the only, Republican lawmaker that I can think of who criticized Israel's actions in Gaza, calling it genocide.

And when she was asked about that, she said, "Well, I just learned about it.

I just heard about it."

And that is why she was moved to make these comments.

Do you think this is kind of what has often been a kind of trajectory for people when they serve in these positions and are exposed to more information than they had previously?

Or is there something beyond it that you can identify that really speaks to a bigger issue with voters in general?

Yeah, I think Marjorie Taylor Greene, you know, personally, I think she's, she appears to be someone who is a really hardcore Trump supporter and conservative and gets to Congress and finds out maybe that things aren't that simple.

And not that necessarily I think she's becoming a liberal or a moderate.

I mean, she's trying to sort of tack to this more sort of, you know, optics, optic friendly saying, you know, I regret my toxic political behavior of the past.

But I do think she's finding out that things are a lot more complicated.

But I think also she is symbolic of a broader trend in the Republican Party, a sort of dissatisfaction with Trump.

And how do you see that?

Where do you see that?

Sure.

I mean, you can look all over.

I mean, you can look at the rise of white nationalist podcaster Nick Fuentes, who's a guy who marched in Charlottesville, is now in his 20s, and has managed really from out of nowhere to build this following among young, particularly young men in the Republican Party, very explicitly racist and anti-Jewish.

He's a guy who a few years ago, I mean, was seen as anathema, even within the far fringes of the Republican Party.

They wanted nothing to do with him.

He couldn't come into conservative conferences like CPAC.

But now we see people like Tucker Carlson, who obviously is a massive voice on the right, having friendly interviews with him.

We see fights at the Heritage Foundation, which is a major Republican think tank, over how they should react to Nick Fuentes.

And so you can see figures like this kind of getting inside the party and stirring up trouble in a way that -- and sort of growing their own bases in a way that exists outside of Trumpism, and I think, you know, poses some problems for the party in the future.

I mean, for one example, I mean, Nick Fuentes, among other things, has said he thinks Hitler is really cool.

I mean, how is that going to play with the average voter if this is someone who starts palling around with lawmakers or appearing in more media outlets?

Is that the main fault line that you see?

These voices that who are pretty much, whose through line is this extremist form of racism and anti-Semitism?

Is that the fault line you see or are there others?

I think there are a few.

I mean the anti-Semitism and the racism is one aspect.

I think that's also linked to more, I think, more mainstream questions about how supportive Republicans should be of Israel.

And obviously I think that line kind of blurs often to the advantage of figures like Nick Fuentes.

You know in the past the idea of Republicans being critical of Israel was unheard of.

But I think we're hearing more voices like that from people like Fuentes, but also Tucker Carlson.

Even the Heritage Foundation said, you know, we have to look out for America's interests first.

On the other hand, I think there are also divides on economic issues, questions of immigration, topics like H-1B visas, bringing in foreign workers.

I mean, this is something that the tech companies that have aligned themselves with Trump really want to continue, whereas you're seeing a lot of disaffected young white men, I would say for the most part, in America who are saying, you know, these foreign workers are stealing our jobs.

So, we're starting to see these new, I would say, almost novel policy issues emerge in the Republican Party.

And Trump is either unwilling or sort of uninterested in doing anything about it.

You know, another significant event in recent months was the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

What is your sense of the impact of what happened to Charlie Kirk?

I think Charlie Kirk's murder had, you know, on one hand, I think it was really sort of a uniting moment for the right.

I mean, we saw that they had the big memorial service and, you know, figures, very varied figures, you know, people who are often typically at odds with each other were there.

On the other hand, I think it sort of created a leadership vacuum and it created this sort of moment of chaos.

And I mean, to be frank, a lot of these right wing media personalities, they're very fractious and they're very willing to sort of take advantage of an opportunity.

So you have people like former Charlie Kirk friend Candace Owens, promoting conspiracy theories about his murders, suggesting maybe Israel or even France did it, and that somehow his organization was involved in it and betrayed him.

You have people like Nick Fuentes, who was sort of Charlie Kirk's arch enemy, sort of trying to take that spot.

And so, you know, I think a lot of the chaos and the divisiveness we're seeing within the right right now can also be traced back to Charlie Kirk, to the murder, because he was sort of a, even before his death, he was sort of a uniting figure who tied a lot of factions together.

And without him, I think that's producing a lot of disenmity.

Talk a little bit more, if you would, about the Epstein files.

Why does that have such a hold on the public?

I mean, I think for people outside of sort of the right-wing media bubble, it can be hard to understand why Epstein in particular has had such resonance.

Because we look at all the other potential scandals that Trump has participated in or been accused of involvement with, and the way that the base doesn't really care about that.

But I think Epstein matters because for so many years, this was sort of a Republican-coded scandal, or this was an issue Republicans were told by people like J.D.

Vance, Cash Patel, a lot of people in right-wing media.

They were told, "This is an important issue.

We've got to get these files.

We've got to get this client list."

And there was this assumption that all these top Democrats would be exposed as pedophiles.

On the other hand, in July, when Trump suddenly said, "Oh, never mind.

We're moving on from this.

We're not releasing the files," and then, in fact, started to insult people who were still interested in the story, many of them his own supporters, I think that's when the trouble started because suddenly this U-turn that there had been no sort of narrative groundwork laid for Republicans was really jarring.

And so that's why I think we're seeing people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mason, Congress, who supported the efforts to release the files and ultimately why it passed nearly unanimously in the House because people realize this is something voters care about.

What else do they care about?

The fact is the president's approval ratings are at a historic low.

They've always been low among Democrats.

Increasingly, independents are not pleased.

But the real erosion has to come from his own base.

So what else is it that the base is disappointed in?

I think going back to the first Trump administration, the 2016 campaign, Republican voters have made this deal where basically they were told, you know, you may not like Trump's scandals, you may not like his personal behavior, but you know, he's a businessman, the economy is going to be great.

And so suddenly, and in particular in the 2024 race, so much was made by Republicans about inflation.

But now inflation is continuing, most prices are still high, and the economy is still going to be a lot harder to deliver on.

And so I think that's why there's this discontent.

I mean, I think also there's this kind of this MAGA populism.

There's this idea that represented by people like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Steve Bannon, that really you don't want to do this kind of old school Republican austerity cuts to entitlement programs, in this case, like the Obamacare subsidies, because that alienates people from issues like, you know, if you really want to carry out deportations, for example, you're going to alienate people if you're focused on cutting the deficit.

And yet we're seeing I think the Trump administration do a lot of these classic moves just to do Republican tax cuts, to accomplish these almost pretty Trump fiscal agenda items.

And I think that's angering a lot of Trump's more the people he brought to the party who are not traditional Republicans.

And what about the president's own statements?

For example, he had a cabinet meeting this week where he called the issue of affordability, the Democrat hopes, that it's kind of a made up issue.

Does that you know, how does that land?

How does something like that land?

I mean, I think it's starting to have real echoes of the Biden administration's struggles with inflation.

A lot of talk about, you know, well, the numbers aren't as bad as you think.

J.D.

Vance said, you know, give us some more time.

And, you know, I think as we saw with the Biden administration, that's a really tough position to be in.

You know, it's it's difficult to to bring these prices down and particularly when it's something that people have experienced with every day when going to the grocery store, seeing the prices go up.

I think it's difficult for any administration and particularly one that does not seem that politically adept at the moment.

I think it's kind of struggling.

It's facing restless Republicans in Congress, as we saw with the Epstein discharge petition.

So it's, I think inflation is sort of, it's probably the biggest political pressure the White House faces, but it's far from the only one.

I'm curious about how the president's kind of comportment affects this conversation, because one of the things I think has been sort of puzzling to Democrats/progressives/ independents all this time is that the president's coarseness, the way he barks at people, the demeaning way he speaks to people, do you think that that matters, or do you think people just say, oh, that's just Trump being Trump?

What do you think?

I think it does matter.

I mean, I think certainly we've had about a decade of Trump in politics now, and we can get in our heads about nothing sticks to him, he's Teflon Don, he's able to avoid every scandal.

But I think the polling and then the special election results and the off-year elections suggest otherwise.

I mean, issues like Trump writing a birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein or Epstein having emails where he suggests he has some kind of leverage on Trump, or issues, you know, sort of more concrete issues like affordability.

You know, I think that matters to people.

And, you know, ultimately, I think the evidence has been that people were really only willing to accept Trump's behavior as long as the economy was doing well.

And if that changes, I mean, we have a potential AI bubble on the horizon and we have all these other potential economic issues, you know, I think Trump could be in trouble.

Before we let you go, is the conservative/MAGA media sphere as united as it was or seems to be around Trump?

Do you see any fissures with them?

I think we're seeing right-wing media outlets and particularly this sort of new crop of social media personalities on the right who have managed to amass tens of millions of followers, people like Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, maybe Megyn Kelly.

We're seeing them sort of seek a little distance from the administration.

There is this sense that Trump, I mean in the past, Trump really kind of ruled the party with an iron fist and anyone who's critical of Trump, you risk being excommunicated and basically having their career destroyed.

But more and more, you know, we're seeing people, even people like Laura Loomer, who's very close to Trump and whose career really relies on her access to the White House, you know, saying critical things about Trump taking a jet from Qatar, for example.

And so I think there's this sense of, you know, perhaps the midterms aren't going to go very well and then Trump will really be a lame duck.

And then, you know, who's next?

And there's going to be, I think, kind of a scrabbling for among these factions, whether it's J.D.

Vance or Marco Rubio, or I'm sure a dozen other candidates we can't even think of now.

I think there's going to be this attempt in right-wing media to position yourself for what comes after Trump.

And I think for a lot of people, that's going to mean getting more critical of Trump himself.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for having me.