In the latest episode of the soap opera posing as politics in the United States, President Donald Trump dramatically split from Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a former ally and notorious MAGA hat wearer.
On Friday, on his Truth Social platform, Trump denounced his fellow Republican as “crazy” and “far left,” claiming he didn’t have time to deal with her alleged barrage of phone calls: “I can’t take a call from a ranting lunatic every day.”
As The New York Times noted, Trump had “supported” Greene when she was criticized “for expressing conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks, school shootings, and wildfires sparked by space lasers.”
Anyway, there's nothing “lunatic” about any of that.
Greene denies calling the president and instead says she had texted him to suggest he stop trying to thwart the full disclosure of the so-called Epstein files related to the late pedophile and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, which may implicate Trump.
The US House of Representatives will vote this week on the issue, and Greene is not the only Republican to break ranks. Several other House Republicans have also challenged Trump on the Epstein front, including Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Lauren Boebert of Colorado.
In a typical about-face, Trump has now spontaneously changed his position on the Epstein files, posting on Truth Social late Sunday: “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide.”
And yet the Epstein files are not the only issue that raises the question of whether MAGA might not be headed toward some kind of self-combustion.
As Trump recently reminded Americans: “Don't forget, MAGA was my idea. MAGA wasn't anyone else's idea.”
So it stands to reason that people associate the clear failure of “making America great again” with the very idea of man.
Overt propaganda can only go so far, and people tend to notice when they don't have enough money to put food on the table despite optimistic presidential pronouncements about the state of the economy.
Even Trump has apparently realized, to some extent, that he can further alienate his base by insisting on meaningless tariffs and other punitive financial measures. As a non-solution, the government will now reduce tariffs on coffee and bananas while the president mulls possible $2,000 tariff refund checks and 50-year mortgages.
A Nov. 14 White House press release blamed Democrats for the country's “economic disaster,” but assured citizens that “food and housing prices are trending in the right direction” and that prices “of everyday staples,” like ice cream, are experiencing “decreases.”
The press release ended on an inspiring note: “We are making progress and the best is yet to come.”
In addition to the cost of living crisis, another source of growing discontent among Republicans is US support for Israel. In July, Greene became the first Republican lawmaker to call the genocide in the Gaza Strip by name, condemning the “famine” of Palestinians.
To be sure, American aid to Israel is not just a Republican issue; Trump's Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, was more than happy to throw tens of billions of dollars at the genocidal state as it starved and annihilated civilians in Gaza.
The Trump administration, however, has added a slight twist to business as usual by not only backing Israel to the hilt, but also simultaneously threatening to starve poor Americans at home by withholding essential food assistance.
But hey, at least the price of ice cream is “going down.”
Last week, two days before his official break with Greene, Trump took to Truth Social to warn that “only a very bad or stupid Republican would fall into” the Democratic “trap” of the “Jeffrey Epstein hoax,” supposedly invented solely to distract from the Democrats' wide-ranging transgressions.
But it appears that a growing number of MAGA supporters may be at risk of descending into evil and stupidity as Trump reveals that he may not be the most qualified person to “drain the swamp in Washington, DC,” one of the president's timeless promises to root out corruption and other traditional political vices.
Indeed, Trump's fits of apoplexy over the possible disclosure of details about Epstein – i.e. someone who was deeply entrenched in said “swamp” – do not bode well in terms of drainage prospects.
On the other hand, the fact that Americans re-elected a nepotistic billionaire and convicted criminal to run the country suggests that the quagmire probably won't go away anytime soon.
On a micro level, the intra-MAGA soap opera may provide some fleeting gratification to viewers. But it's not as if the drama sets the stage for a substantial improvement in the political landscape.
And while opposing Trump is, objectively speaking, a noble goal, we don't really need more people thinking that space lasers cause wildfires and comparing pandemic safety measures to the Holocaust. We also don't need more genocide-enabling Democrats, who at the end of the day are just as committed as Republicans to maintaining a corrupt plutocracy.
Blind, unconditional support for the president may be eroding among his MAGA base. But rest assured, the swamp is here to stay.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Al Jazeera.
