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President Donald Trump on Monday lashed back at Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, accusing the longtime MAGA firebrand of trying to ingratiate herself with Democrats by criticizing his recent pursuit of overseas peace deals and lack of focus on the kitchen table issues that propelled him to the presidency. Speaking during a swearing-in ceremony for U.S. Ambassador to India Sergio Gor, Trump was asked about Greene’s recent comments to Axios in which she panned what she called his “America Last” focus on foreign policy amid the ongoing government shutdown and continuing affordability since returning to power in January. At one point in the interview, she complained about “revolving door at the White House of foreign leaders” whilst Americans are “screaming from their lungs” about high prices. In response, Trump told reporters: “I don't know what happened to Marjorie.” “She's a nice woman, but I don't know what happened. She's lost her way, I think,” he said in his first extensive response to her growing criticisms. Greene has in the past month made several cordial appearances on CNN, with Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown dayside and Kaitlan Collins at night as well as a virtual love-fest on ABC’s left-leaning daytime talk show The View last week. Trump also claimed Greene was “now catering to the other side” by criticizing his administration and said the fact that she’s hitting out at his pursuit of foreign peace deals shows “she doesn’t know.” The third-term congresswoman has become somewhat of a thorn in the side of GOP leaders over the last few months, starting with her decision to ally herself with Democrats and a few other Republican women who have joined Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie’s effort to force a vote on releasing files related to the Department of Justice probe into deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. She has also repeatedly hit out at Trump and the GOP majority over what she describes as a failure to tackle the cost of living since Trump returned to the White House after campaigning against Biden-era inflation. Additionally, Greene has sided with Democrats who are pushing to renew Affordable Care Act subsidies that help many Americans purchase health insurance, citing her adult children’s rising premiums as evidence of the need to extend the tax credits. In an interview with the conservative broadcaster Real America's Voice last month, she warned that letting Joe Biden's Affordable Care Act subsidies expire at the end of the year would "crush" Americans' finances. "My big warning is, we have to take this very seriously. Because if Republicans are responsible for doing nothing about this, and regular innocent Americans' health insurance premiums double, they're not gonna be able to pay their rent," she said. “They're already getting crushed with the cost of living expenses that the Biden administration created but that have not come back down.” During an appearance on The View last week, Greene also slammed House Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to let the chamber come back into session during the now 41-day government shutdown. “I just can’t get over is we’re not working right now. And I put that criticism directly on the Speaker of the House, and we should be at work,” she declared. “All the people sitting in this audience – they go to work every day. People at home watching this show – they go to work every day. Ladies, you go to work every day [as do] the people on your set, and it is an embarrassment to me that we’re not in session.” Greene added that she was “tired of the p*ssing contest in Washington, D.C. between the men” and mocked Johnson and her own party for having no plan to help Americans afford health care coverage more than a decade after the ACA was signed into law by then-president Barack Obama. “I hope that Mike Johnson is finally giving a single healthcare policy because the country deserves it, and it shouldn’t be a secret. And I shouldn’t have to go into a SCIF to go find our Republican health insurance plan,” she said.
