Today, Explained - Marjorie Taylor Greene gone rogue

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

Over two weeks in, the government shutdown is exposing fault lines on both sides of the aisle. Perhaps the most surprising one: the political left turn of the MAGA darling from Georgia. This episode was produced by Danielle Hewitt and Miles Bryan, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Adriene Lilly, and hosted by Noel King. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., outside the U.S. Capitol. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A government shutdown isn't just an opportunity for our nation's lawmakers to skip work for two weeks and counting. A shutdown is when political stars are born. Senate freshman Ted Cruz and his health care filibuster in 2013. Do you like green eggs and ham? I do not like them, Sam, I am. I do not like green eggs and ham. Pelosi, Schumer, Trump, and the border wall throwdown of 2018. Chuck, we can build a much bigger section with more money. Let's debate. Let's debate in private. Okay? Yeah, let's debate in private. It is devoid, frankly, a fact. In 2025, Schumer's back.

Hakeem Jeffries is trying to break through. But why don't you just keep your mouth shut? Oh, because you showed up. Is that the way to talk? But it is Georgia Congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Green. Why don't you go talk about Jewish space lasers? Her? Her. Who is winning hearts and minds with a compelling mix of sticking to her guns

and generally being less nutty. That's all ahead on Today Explained. Support of the show, and it comes from The Guardian. If you listen to our show, my guess is that you value independent voices and perspectives on the news. You want real reporting on real stories, and you don't want to wonder if the news you're getting is being skewed by an unseen hand. The Guardian says they're fiercely independent, too. They aspire to report the whole picture, and their coverage goes beyond the news. They have new perspectives on culture, wellness, sports, and more.

For U.S. and World News Without Compromise or Paywall, read, watch, and listen today at The Guardian.com. Hey, at Dandy Randy 9.92, we saw you trolling Toyota's All Electric BZ yesterday. Come try it out. This is the BZ? Maybe I was wrong. One Drive can change your mind in the all-electric BZ. Toyota, let's go places. What do you think today explained this? I don't know. Dave Weigel, semaphore, two plus weeks into a shutdown. Let's talk about Chuck Schumer. With open enrollment around the corner, Republicans cannot continue to kick this can down

the road. It's happening now. Chuck Schumer had an opportunity to shut the government down earlier this year, and he passed on it. Here's what would happen if we cut off government spending. It would be devastation like we have never seen. Is this a redemption arc for him? Is he, is there a sense that like, okay, Chuck Schumer finally made the right move? That's part of it. Republicans have tried to make that central to their argument against the Democrats, that Schumer's only doing this because he's worried about a primary challenge where about the left. The Marxist are about to elect a mayor in New York City. That's Chuck Schumer state.

And he's terrified that he's going to get a challenge from his far left. I've noted that Chuck Schumer is a very far left politician, but he's not far enough left for the communist. It's a little rich because wet Republican in Congress is not making some decisions based on whether Trump will endorse a primary challenger. Schumer is not up again until 2028. However, what happened? You set it up well.

The last time was that there were demands by protesters, indivisible, the other organizers of no king's protests, for the government to be shut down because Trump was acting in their words like a king. And you needed to cut off his resources. Democrats at the time said two things, and Democrats being Schumer. One, the executive branch, Trump. Musk, Doge, and this really evil man people don't know about Vote, who's head of OMB, his name is Vote. They could cut off anything they want simply by saying it's not essential. And two, Trump's going to be less popular later in the year.

So we're going to have a better fight, better conditions for a fight, I should say. Two things happen. One, he did get slightly less popular, although he's still not as unpopular as he was at this point eight years ago. And two, Russ Vogue just did that anyway. We want the bureaucrats to be Trump. dramatically affected. And that has changed Democrats' calculation, too. What is different about a shutdown environment or a environment where the government is funded?

And this also gets into when they pass something, if they pass a continuing resolution, well, the last one had funding for a bunch of jobs and programs that were cut by the president. And Republicans passed a recitions package saying, we are cutting more of the funding that you appropriated with 51 Senate votes. Yes, we needed 70-year votes in the Senate to get this through the filibuster. we have a different tactic that gets us to cut it without coming to you for anything. What position does that put Democrats in? Well, basically, in the position of explaining what's going on and hoping that the country says, you're right, Democrats, we'd like to vote for you now.

So Schumer is doing okay, right? It hasn't been a disaster for the life of Chuck. Then we have Hakeem Jeffries. Hakeem Jeffries very clearly wants to make a name for himself at this moment. He's been out there. He's been public. He tried to do a live stream when the shutdown started. Good afternoon, everybody.

House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, here. As I understand it, no one came to his live stream. Where do we position Jeffries in all this? Well, Jeffries is not very well known as a national figure. Schumer is better known and more disliked. There does seem to be a gap between how good his team thinks he is at presenting a face for the party and how good he actually is. There was a very small but telling controversy a couple months ago where Jeffrey's social media

team kept posting photos of him with slightly distorted backgrounds, which looked to everybody like they were using an app to make him look cooler. Utter calamity of the week goes to none other than Hakeem Jeffries. The photo captioned Home Sweet Home shows Jeffries leaning against a park bench, but something's off. The bench is visibly warped. And the question was, who is that for? Who is the person undecided by what they showed for the Democrat is paying attention to this?

So how does a opposition leader get known? Sometimes they can do something popular. That's pretty rare. Often they become the bogeyman of ads from the other party. This is Nancy Pelosi was because she was from San Francisco and that has lots of connotations in politics. Republicans immediately attacked her when she took over the Democratic leadership in 2003 as a San Francisco liberal. That hasn't happened to Jeffries. If you look at even Republican advertising, how often do they use the,

face of Jeffreys versus the face of Alexander Ocas Cortez or it's still Joe Biden. But in this fight right now, Jeffries is getting on TV more. He's doing more interviews. And he is a methodical in interviews. I've, you know, I've thrown questions in the, at his press conferences, his weekly press conferences. He does not stutter. He does not go bereft for an answer. He has something to say. He turns it back to what he wants to say. Republicans say again and again, it is Democrats that are holding up this deal. How do you respond? Well, we want to see the government shutdown come to an end as well.

It never should have occurred. And unfortunately, Donald Trump and the Republicans decided that they would rather shut the government down than provide health care to working class Americans. He has impressed some Democrats with how he's handled this from that very low starting point where they weren't sure that he was the kind of leader that could inspire anybody. Is it a problem for him that Republicans still want to? to make AOC the face of the shutdown, the face of the opposition. Like, the real question seems to be, there are many real questions here. There seem to be questions about Jeffrey's charisma. The overall Republican argument is that these guys aren't really leaders of anything.

They have a crazy, violent movement undergirding everything they're doing. And Republicans have been very comfortable in the last few days, very comfortable saying these no kings protests, which are organized by very mainstream liberal electoral groups that They're not anarchists. They just want to get elected and do things. They're that they're the most violent thing they can do if you look at a charging document is blocking a truck from moving into an ice center. The theory we have right now, they have a hate America rally that's scheduled for October 18th on the national mall. It's all the pro-Hamas wing and the, you know, the, the, the, uh, the, uh, Antifa people.

They're all coming out. Uh, their argument being these Democrats are run by crazy people. Uh, who, who cares what Chuck Schumer thinks because he can't control them? It's being told to us that they won't be able to reopen the government until after that rally. All right. So at the end of the day, there is a simplistic version of the big question around the shutdown, which is who's going to win? Who's going to win the messaging and who's going to take the blame? I was at the airport over the weekend and I was trying to find the video that the federal government is playing where Christy Noem blames the Democrats. Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government.

And because of this, many of our operations are impacted. It was not playing in the Denver airport at that time. But a lot of people have said, look, the Republicans have got the weight of the federal government behind them as they try to make their argument that this is the fault of the Democrats. Who do you think is winning the messaging here? And do you see that shifting at all in the next couple of however long this shutdown lasts? Have you seen the country's view of the parties change over this? Not really. So electorally, the only thing coming up in November.

our elections in a few states, races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia, in those races, Democrats have been very comfortable saying, I'm supporting any fight for health care and for federal workers because if we don't fight, then Republicans are going to make your health care bills go up. And we are the party that will make your health care bills go down. Yeah, and to sum it up, what I've seen a polling, but tell me if I'm wrong, is people at the moment are blaming Republicans more. A new poll shows a majority of Americans blame Republicans for the shutdown. And you can see it's a sweep across the board.

You look at the New York Times poll. Blame Republicans more by seven points. How about the CBS poll? Came out yesterday. Blame Republicans more by nine points. This is tied into the way Trump is handling it. So there was more of an equanimity between how people viewed the president and the Congress and prior shutdowns.

The theme of the second Trump administration has been that he is able to use powers and the court will sign off on it. And he can do things without going to Congress. And so he comes into the shutdown with this image of regal power, ability to do whatever he wants. That's what Democrats are running against, saying this president runs the government, takes credit for doing everything. If things get worse, they will blame the president because it just doesn't stand a reason if you're paying a little bit of attention as a voter that the imperial president is undone by Democrats who don't run anything.

All right, Dave, so some weeks back, the Democrats decided they were going to make this shutdown about health care. And that was a choice. At the moment, there is some reporting that Republicans might be willing to make compromises on the Obamacare subsidies. In the meantime, you have Marjorie Taylor Green out there beating the drum saying, like, the party is failing people. The Republicans are failing people on health care. Do you think the Democrats could get some tangible wins through the shutdown? Well, one way it could end would be a compromise that extends Obamacare subsidies through next year. Would Republicans run on we saved part of Obamacare? Probably not, but they've done this before.

They've won governing trifecta a couple times since Barack Obama left office and they don't get rid of the Affordable Care Act. Now, the last Trump midterm election, 2018, the fact that Republicans went after health care funding was a incredibly harmful issue. for them. If Republicans can punt that argument into 2027, that probably would be better for them electorally. It's not good to be holding the bag if voters see their Costco up and blame you. Semaphore's Dave Weigel coming up in a shutdown that became all about health care, how Maga darling Marjorie Taylor Green ended up making the strongest case for the Democrats. Support for today, comes from Green Chef. Green Chef thinks fall is the perfect time to reset and bring back those healthy habits.

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Find the perfect layering pieces for you by exploring the Macy's fall fashion, style guide. Shop in store or online at macy's.com. You're listening to Today Explained. Noelle from before with Tia Mitchell, the Washington Bureau Chief for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, host of the Politically Georgia podcast. She's been covering Representative Marjorie Taylor Green for years. And Tia says her shocking turn is not that shocking. No, it's not surprising.

me because to understand Marjorie Taylor Green, A, you have to understand that she comes from hard, right, MAGA. She does not identify as Q&N anymore. She denounced it early in her career. But that was like her origin story. That's where she comes from. The fake news media hates me. Big Tech censors me. The D.C. Swamp fears me. And George Soros and the Democrats are trying to take me down. There is an Islamic invasion into our government offices right now. She comes from kind of that Christian nationalist ultra-conservative movement. She believes that trans people really shouldn't exist.

She does not believe abortion should exist. But on the issue of a lot of populist things, the consistency with the Epstein files. The shame falls on the people in power over the past several. decades that protected the monster, Jeffrey Epstein, and his cabal that continued a nightmare. Those people deserve the shame. The consistency with wanting to not fund a war that is ravaging Gaza. They're not Hamas. They're literally women and children, and you can't unsee the amount of pictures and videos of

children that have been blown to pieces. And so for Marjorie Taylor Green, she is someone who says, my values have always been my values. I've never wavered. And if that means sometimes I have to disagree with President Trump, then so be it. Because I'm not wavering from where I stood all along. Let's talk about the shutdown and what she's been saying there. What is her main point of divergence with much of the rest of the Republican Party? That comes from being a mother.

She says, I'm a mom. And so when it comes to what is affecting my adult children's lives who are 22, 26, and 28, I'm going to be 1,000 percent fighting for them over any politician and any party. And I can tell you right now, that generation, they are barely making it. And they're very hopeless for their future. And so her criticism has been. that the issue Democrats raised

that if the subsidies are allowed to expire, many people's insurance, and we're talking about millions of people, their insurance, will go up in ways that they will find it hard to afford coverage. And she says, Republicans, instead of engaging with this real issue, are just kind of saying,

oh, that's just Democrats' belly aching. That's just Democrats trying to keep the government shut down. And they're not really listening to voters and they're not engaging on what she says is a valid issue that should be addressed. To allow Democrats to have some sort of moral high ground on this issue because they're only one, the only one's talking about it, I think is a major failure from the Republican Party.

And I'm not going to stand there and just keep talking the talking points when she wasn't necessarily saying do what the Democrats want. She wasn't even necessarily saying I think the Democrats are right on their fix. She's saying the Democrats are right

and talking about it. Why aren't we Republicans also talking about it? Why don't we Republicans have an answer for the people who say, well, what are you going to do about the cost of health coverage? Well, I don't think it's good advice that a government shutdown is going

to help Republicans in the midterms. I don't agree with that. I also don't think it's good advice that Republicans ignoring the health insurance crisis is going to be good for midterms. I actually think that would be very bad for midterms. You know, we have been covering, since the big, beautiful bill passed, we've been covering the fact that many people who get these ACA subsidies, they live in red states. They are people who voted for President Trump. How do her constituents in Georgia feel about the way in which she's standing up for them, even if it puts her at odds with the president?

I mean, they've always stood beside her. Her constituents in her district would say, well, I like that she's not afraid to speak her mind. Yeah, I might not agree with everything she says. Sometimes I think she goes too far. But at the end of the day, she's fighting for us. She's not bowing down to, you know, the woke mob. And so now she has evolved. She, you know, she's in her third term now.

She's learning how to play the game. She's learning that sometimes you do have to vote for bills you don't like for the greater good or to get something good in the bill, even if you don't like other things in the bill that you think are bad. And she is learning how to work with her coworkers and her colleagues in Congress. She's toned down some of her more controversial rhetoric. She's apologized when people have accused her again of anti-Semitism, for example. There is no comparison to the Holocaust. And there are words that I have said and remarks that I've made that I know are offensive.

And for that, I want to apologize. It is hard to see in our present day how she would live down something like Jewish space lasers, for example. You're talking about her moderating, and I wonder, is she moderating because she understands that politically she needs to moderate to survive, or is Marjorie Taylor Green actually changing? So I don't know if moderating is the right word because she's still very conservative. She's still hard, right, but I think she has moderated, if the word is to be used, it's in her approach. What's different in what I think looks like moderation, but it's not really moderation. It's just a lot of Republican leaders, elected officials shift to align with Donald Trump in ways that don't fall in a clear box, right, of, you know, conservative or moderate.

They just fall in the box of, did you do what Donald Trump wanted you to do? Did you say what Donald Trump wanted you to say? And so she doesn't shift in that way. And so sometimes it looks like she's falling outside of that box. But really, it's the box that's shifting, not her. She says, I've still remained aligned with President Trump. I'm a big champion of his. I'm loyal to him.

It's just I choose to disagree at times. But the more you understand her and where she comes from, the less those disagreements will surprise you. There's something you're nodding to here, which is that MAGA and Donald Trump used to be synonymous. Marjorie Taylor Green is one of those interesting flashpoints that proves that in October of 2025, MAGA and Donald Trump are not synonymous anymore. Or you could say MAGA means different things to different people. Because I think some people would say to be MAGA means aligned with Donald Trump.

And so we've seen, you know, people like Laura Lumer and Marjorie Taylor Green openly disagree about which direction to take. Her rhetoric and her tone is, does not match the base, does not match MAGA, does not match most Republicans, I know. And I am completely denouncing it. I'm over it. Quite frankly, you know, before his death, Charlie Kirk was involved in some of those, you know, internal spats. among Republicans about what it truly means to be MAGO and where that aligns with President Trump. And it's fascinating to watch, and it's going to be fascinating, particularly if and when Donald Trump decides to get out of active politics, you know, because right now he's the glue that holds it together even loosely. It is interesting to see how Democrats, some Democrats, maybe not. even elected Democrats, but people who vote Democrat have embraced Marjorie Taylor-Gream.

They really like the way she's talking about health care and the way she won't let up. Does she want that? Does she want support from the other side? I think she likes the fact that people are starting to listen to her. And some of that is just she came in hot and controversial and leaning into that. and that gave her a brand of being someone that people on the left just didn't want to hear from. And so they didn't listen to her. They didn't engage with her.

And so what we're hearing from some Democrats are like, wow, I spent five minutes listening to Marjorie Taylor Green. And by darn it, she makes sense. I can't believe I find myself agreeing with some of the things she's saying. And I think for her, she is gratified by the fact that when people listen to her, they shed the assumption that she's just a crazy QAnon lady who has nothing intelligent to say. Now, does she want to be a Democrat? Absolutely not. Not too long ago, we gave our elected officials more flexibility to, like, it doesn't have to be either you're with us or you're against us at all times. We thought our elected officials should find places where they had common ground.

And when there was common ground, you worked together. You didn't just say, well, I can't cross the aisle because those people are our enemy. I think that's the other thing for some Democrats and people watching Marjorie Taylor Green it's challenging that it's challenging that thinking that oh yeah Marjorie

Telegreen is all of these things but can I still agree with her sometimes? Can I still hear her out and find common ground and what does that say about what I think in my politics she doesn't have to be all bad

I guess, is what some people are realizing. And maybe if they realize that about Marjorie Taylor-Green, they'll realize that about other people in politics. And I just think that's a hard place in our political climate for people to reckon with. T.M. Mitchell is the Washington Bureau Chief of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Miles Bryan and Danielle Hewitt produced today's show. Amina El Sadi edited. Patrick Boyden, Adrian Lilly engineered, and Laura Bullard is our senior researcher.

Hey, here's some news. The very talented Ested Herndon is joining Vox. Estead was a political reporter at the New York Times. You may know. He also hosted The Runup Podcast, and he is going to be filling in for Sean Ramos firm over the next five months. We are very excited to have him with us, and you're going to start hearing him on the show around the end of this month. Now, if you're a fan of Today Explained, you could consider becoming a Vox member. Cool perks like ad-free versions of the show, Unlimited Reading on the website, a member-exclusive newsletter, so much more.

If you sign up now, you get 30% off an annual membership. You can go to Vox.com slash members to join. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Thank you.