The unexpected courage of Marjorie Taylor Greene
If you had told me two years ago that I’d sit down and write a piece giving Marjorie Taylor Greene credit for courage, I would’ve laughed you out of the room.
For years, I considered her one of my primary political opponents. I strongly disagreed with her positions, her rhetoric, her alliances, her entire brand. I said so publicly and often.
But reality is reality. And right now, in this moment, I have to say something I never imagined saying:
Marjorie Taylor Greene has become one of the most sincere, consistent voices for Gaza in the entire United States Congress.
Has she been perfect? No. Neither have you. Is she suddenly my political twin on everything? Of course not. But if I’m judging people by what they are doing right now about the genocide in Gaza, she is showing a level of courage that most Democrats won’t even approach and that a lot of Republicans are running away from.
She has been calling out her own party. She has been calling out the blind, cult-like loyalty to Israel. She has been demanding the release of the Epstein files. She has been voting and speaking against the very machinery her base usually worships.
And the cost of that is showing up in real time.
Trump turns on her — and unleashes the machine
In one of her posts this week, Marjorie Taylor Greene said something that stopped me in my tracks.
She explained that Donald Trump had just attacked her and lied about her — not privately, not as a disagreement between friends, but publicly, viciously. And she said the thing that “sent him over the edge” was her fight to release the Epstein files before an upcoming vote.
Read that again.
Not her opposition to Biden.
Not some personal slight.
Her demand to release the files on Jeffrey Epstein and his network — files that many of us suspect would implicate powerful people in both parties, including Trump himself.
She says Trump is fighting hard to stop those files from coming out. Harder, she points out, than he fights to help struggling Americans who can’t afford food, rent, or healthcare.
That alone is a scandal.
But then she goes further. In another post, she writes that private security firms are reaching out to her, warning her that threats against her are spiking — and that those threats are being fueled and egged on by “the most powerful man in the world.”
The man she supported. The man she helped get elected. The man she defended when almost every other Republican was running from him.
Now, she says, her phone is blowing up with warnings. She talks about past death threats against her, and against others, and how this rhetoric has already led to people being radicalized to commit violence.
And then she says the quiet part out loud:
This time, the threats are being fueled by the President of the United States.
Family, I need you to hear me:
When a head of state puts someone in his own movement in the crosshairs, for daring to stand up to him on Israel and Epstein — that is not normal politics. That is authoritarian behavior. That is cult behavior.
And she knows it. She says plainly: as a woman, she takes threats from men seriously. She says she now has a small understanding of the fear and pressure Epstein’s victims must have felt.
Think about how big of a shift that is for her. The woman who used to be the loudest megaphone for that movement is now saying, “I feel some of what the victims feel, and I take this seriously.”
That is not nothing.
We don’t have to agree on everything to tell the truth about this
Let me be clear so nobody twists my words.
I am not writing this as a blanket endorsement of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s politics. I still disagree with her on many issues that matter deeply to me. I am not telling you to become a fan, or to forget the harmful things she’s said in the past.
What I am saying is this:
When someone shows real courage, especially when it costs them everything, we should be able to say so.
When someone chooses truth over a cult leader, we should be able to name that as a good thing.
When someone crosses a line from “party before everything” to “country and conscience first,” that matters.
Politics in America has been poisoned by a sick idea: that if someone is your “enemy,” nothing they ever do is good, and if someone is your “hero,” nothing they ever do is bad.
That’s how genocides are justified. That’s how cults work. That’s how leaders become untouchable.
But I refuse to play that game.
In this moment, on this issue, Marjorie Taylor Greene is right, and she is paying a very high price for it. She is losing her chief ally. She is being targeted by her own base. She is receiving serious threats. And still, she is not backing down on Gaza, on Israel’s brutality, or on the Epstein files.
I don’t have to share her politics to respect that courage.
Israel First vs. America First — and Gaza as the line in the sand
What all of this reveals is bigger than one congresswoman.
It reveals the true priority stack inside much of the American right:
Israel first.
Trump second.
The donor class third.
America and everybody else somewhere way down the list.
If you’re doubting that, look at who gets attacked hardest. Is it Democrats who quietly sign off on aid packages to Israel? Not really. It’s Republicans who dare to say, “Maybe our loyalty should be to the American people first. Maybe we shouldn’t bankroll a genocide. Maybe the Epstein files should be released.”
That’s the divide I was talking about in my earlier posts.
On one side, you have people who will sacrifice anything — their values, their integrity, their safety — to keep the money and weapons flowing to Israel and the secrets around Epstein locked away.
On the other side, you have people saying, “No. America first. Truth first. Our conscience first. End the genocide.”
And in that second group, strange alliances are forming — Muslims, Christians, leftists, conservatives, Black folks, white folks, people who never thought they’d stand in the same room, now finding themselves shoulder to shoulder because they cannot stomach what is being done to Palestinians in their name.
That matters more than we know.
What this demands from the rest of us
If a woman like Marjorie Taylor Greene — who spent years building her brand inside a Trump-worshipping, Israel-defending movement — can find the courage to break ranks on Gaza and on Epstein, at huge personal risk… what excuse do the rest of us have to be silent?
What excuse do Democratic members of Congress have, with safe seats and glowing press, to say and do less than she is doing right now?
What excuse do pastors, imams, rabbis, and community leaders have to bite their tongues while bombs are dropped on children and journalists, while men and women are raped and tortured in detention camps, while the most powerful government on earth funds it all?
They don’t have one. And neither do we.
Courage is contagious. So is cowardice. We are watching both play out in real time.
My hope, my prayer, is that stories like this push more people to choose courage — even if it means breaking with their own side, their own leader, their own comfort.
Shaun King
According to recent statements from U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, the Trump administration plans to require all approximately 42 million SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) recipients to reapply for their benefits as part of a major overhaul aimed at reducing fraud, waste, and abuse in the program.
