Background and career
Marjorie Taylor Greene (née Taylor; born May 27, 1974), also known by her initials MTG, is an American politician, businesswoman, and conspiracy theorist who served as the U.S. representative for Georgia's 14th congressional district from 2021 until her resignation in 2026. A former member of the Republican Party, she was elected to Congress in 2020 following the retirement of Republican incumbent Tom Graves and was reelected in 2022 and 2024. Greene is widely considered to be a populist and far-right politician. Greene has promoted Islamophobic, antisemitic, and white supremacist views including the white genocide conspiracy theory, as well as QAnon, and Pizzagate. She has amplified conspiracy theories that allege government involvement in mass shootings in the United States, implicate the Clinton family in murder, and suggest the attacks of 9/11 were a hoax. Before running for Congress, Greene supported calls to execute prominent Democratic Party politicians, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. As a congresswoman, she equated the Democratic Party with Nazis, and compared COVID-19 safety measures to the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust, later apologizing for this comparison. During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Greene promoted Russian propaganda and praised its president Vladimir Putin. Greene identifies as a Christian nationalist. A vocal advocate of President Donald Trump during his first presidency, Greene aided and supported his attempts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election and has promoted Trump's false claims of a stolen election. She called for the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election in Georgia to be decertified, and was part of a group of Republican legislators who unsuccessfully challenged votes for Joe Biden during the 2021 United States Electoral College vote count, even though federal agencies and courts overseeing the election found no evidence of electoral fraud. Days after Biden's inauguration, Greene filed articles of impeachment alleging abuse of power. The U.S. House of Representatives voted to remove Greene from all committee roles on February 4, 2021, in response to her endorsements of political violence. Eleven Republicans joined unanimous Democrats in the vote. Greene was appointed to new committee roles in January 2023. In June 2023, she was expelled from the conservative House Freedom Caucus after insulting fellow caucus member Congresswoman Lauren Boebert. In May 2024, Greene unsuccessfully attempted to oust Republican Mike Johnson from his role as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Greene publicly criticized Trump during his second presidency, questioning whether he was "still America First" and attacking his initial opposition to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which he later signed into law, as well as domestic and foreign policies. Trump responded by berating her on Truth Social and in the press, revoking his endorsement of her and opening the door to primarying her out of her seat. Greene subsequently announced her resignation from Congress, effective January 5, 2026, stating that she did not want her district to endure a "hurtful and hateful primary". In April 2026, amid the 2026 Iran war, Greene called for Trump to be removed from office through the Twenty-fifth amendment; as well as for the Republican Party "to be burned to the ground."
Marjorie Taylor was born on May 27, 1974, to Robert David Taylor and Carrie Fidelle Taylor (née Bacon) in Milledgeville, Georgia. She graduated from South Forsyth High School in Cumming, Georgia, in 1992, and the University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Business Administration in 1996. In statements made in 2019 and in a February 4, 2021 House floor speech, Greene explained her position on gun rights and school shootings. In those remarks, she alluded to being affected by a September 1990 incident at her high school in which an armed student held 53 students hostage for over five hours.
In 2002, Greene's father sold Taylor Commercial, an Alpharetta, Georgia-based general-contracting company that he had founded, to Greene and her then-husband, Perry Greene. As of 2019, Greene and Perry were the company's vice president and president, respectively. Greene was listed as the chief financial officer of Taylor Commercial from 2007 to 2011, but a 2021 Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation determined that she had no significant presence at the company. In 2011, Greene stepped down as the company's CFO and began CrossFit training. By 2012, Greene worked as a part-time coach at an Alpharetta CrossFit gym. In August 2013, she opened CrossFit Passion in Alpharetta with Travis Mayer, a CrossFit athlete. Greene left the business in early 2017. In a 2015 interview, Greene said she and Mayer knew little about how to run a business when they started. Greene has said that she became politically engaged during the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries. In 2017, she began writing for the now defunct American Truth Seekers, a conspiracy news website, which published 59 articles by Greene. In January 2018, she started writing for Law Enforcement Today, a pro-police fake news website, which featured 27 articles Greene authored. In 2017, Greene visited Washington, D.C. to protest against a Republican gun control compromise. Greene was a top official of the Family America Project, a conservative group founded in January 2018. She was a moderator of the organization's Facebook group. In that group, members posted death threats against Democrats; bigotry directed at the family of Barack Obama; and support for multiple conspiracy theories, including claims associated with the John Birch Society about the U.S. government being infiltrated by communists. In February 2019, Greene visited the U.S. Capitol and congressional offices. In a livestream video Greene posted on Facebook, she is seen outside Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's office, calling through the mail slot for Ocasio-Cortez to unlock the door and "face the American citizens that you serve". She also asserted that Ocasio-Cortez should "get rid of [her] diaper". Greene also referred to Ocasio-Cortez's office as a day care center. When visiting the offices of representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, Greene falsely claimed that they were not "official" representatives because they were sworn in to Congress on the Quran. In the videos, Greene said that she wanted Omar and Tlaib to instead be sworn in on the Bible and accused the two representatives of supporting Islamic law.
Having originally announced her intention to run in Georgia's 7th congressional district, Greene instead began her campaign in the 6th district, where she resided, on June 4, 2019. She stated her commitment to balance the federal budget and restrain Congress from using its constitutional power to spend more money, adding: "If we look at our country as our household, we're going to go under foreclosure because we're overspending." Greene also criticized her expected primary opponent, former U.S. representative Karen Handel, for supporting large omnibus spending bills and a series of electoral losses: "She's lost seven races in her entire political career... She steps down from seats that she does win so she can campaign for something else. Basically I would call her [a] professional campaigner, but she loses." On December 13, 2019, Greene announced that she was shifting her campaign to the 14th district after incumbent Tom Graves announced he would not run for reelection there. The district includes much of Northwest Georgia, stretching from the Georgia side of the Chattanooga metropolitan area to the exurbs of Atlanta. Members of the House are constitutionally required to live in the state they represent, but not necessarily in the same congressional district. Hence, although Greene had lived for a long time in Milton, in the 6th district, there would have been no legal barrier to Greene running for the 14th. Still, she said she intended to move to the 14th if she ran there. She subsequently bought a home in nearby Paulding County, which is in the 14th. By the time she was sworn in in January 2021, Greene reported having moved to Rome, also firmly in the 14th. On February 29, 2020, Greene spoke at a gun rights rally in Villanow hosted by Silent No Longer, a group campaigning to make Walker County a Second Amendment sanctuary. At the rally, she held up a banner for American Patriots USA – a far-right group attempting to further its influence with Georgia Republicans. Greene posed for photos with Chester Doles, a 5th-generation Ku Klux Klansman, Grand Klaliff leader, and founder of APUSA; Doles has nearly a dozen assault arrests and served two separate prison sentences in Maryland. Greene campaigned as a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump but was not endorsed by him. She ran on the slogan "Save America, Stop Socialism!" In the days before the primary, Facebook took down a Greene video for violating its terms of service. In the video, Greene held an AR-15 style rifle and warned antifa groups to "stay the hell out of Northwest Georgia". Greene finished first in the June 9 primary. Trump tweeted, "A big winner". Because no candidate received a majority of the vote, she faced neurosurgeon John Cowan in a runoff election. Although Cowan was a Trump supporter, Greene labeled him a RINO, short for "Republican in name only".
In a July 14 runoff debate, Cowan questioned Taylor Commercial's acceptance of Paycheck Protection Program money in relation to Greene's opposition to congressional appropriations of relief funds during the pandemic and also Taylor Commercial's donations to Greene's political campaign. Taylor Commercial received $182,300 in PPP funding from the Small Business Administration during the COVID-19 pandemic. SBA filings declared Taylor Commercial expected to save 12 jobs with the funds. Around two months after her company received the PPP loan, Greene donated $450,000 to her campaign. Greene won the August 11 runoff. On the day after her runoff victory, Trump tweeted his support for her, calling her a future Republican star.
Greene was considered an overwhelming favorite to win the seat in the general election, as the 14th district typically votes heavily Republican. In 2017, the Cook Political Report ranked the district the 10th-most Republican in the country. On September 3, 2020, Greene shared a meme to her Facebook page depicting herself holding an AR-15 style rifle next to a collage of pictures of Ocasio-Cortez, Omar and Tlaib. She wrote that it was time for "strong conservative Christians to go on the offense against these socialists who want to rip our country apart"; the caption under the images was "Squad's worst nightmare". Nancy Pelosi called the meme a threat of violence, and Omar demanded that it be deleted after claiming it had triggered death threats. In response to questions from Forbes about whether the meme was a threat, a Greene campaign spokesperson dismissed that idea. Facebook deleted the meme the next day for violating its policies on inciting violence, prompting Greene to claim that Democrats were trying to "cancel" her. On September 19, 2020, Greene appeared at a gun rights rally in Ringgold, Georgia, where the Georgia III% Martyrs provided security "wearing camouflage, body armor, radios, and in one case a battle ax". During the rally, Greene had Chester Doles – with whom she had posed for a photo earlier in the year – ejected, and U.S. senator Kelly Loeffler made a brief appearance. Greene was expected to face Democratic IT specialist Kevin Van Ausdal, but he withdrew from the race on September 11. This left Greene unopposed in the general election, which she won with 74% of the vote. Van Ausdal, whose name remained on the ballot, took 25%. During her victory speech, Greene called Pelosi "anti-American", a "hypocrite", and a "bitch" whom "we're going to kick ... out of Congress", and had a reporter from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ousted from the venue after he tweeted quotes from her speech. She later mocked Van Ausdal's appearance and got into an argument with former Republican senator Jeff Flake on Twitter. In the days after the election, Greene made deceptive claims that her husband Perry's Floyd County voting record revealed voter fraud, writing on social media that when her husband went to vote early, he was told he had received an absentee ballot despite not requesting one. Floyd County chief elections clerk Robert Brady told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that nothing happened to the missing ballot, and that it was canceled according to procedure, adding that "he [Perry Greene] signed an affidavit on [October] 23rd and he was allowed to vote. ... He only voted one time."
