Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene, once united as staunch allies, have seemingly drifted apart following a disagreement related to the Epstein files—a debate Greene came out on top of. However, the rift between them runs far deeper than just this incident. It highlights a growing division within the MAGA movement itself. Greene’s recent decision to step down in January from her role as Georgia’s 14th district representative is rooted in her criticism of Trump’s policies. Her words resonate with a significant faction within MAGA: “All our country does is fund foreign countries and foreign wars, and never does anything to help the American people.”

While some may dismiss Greene’s statement as hyperbole—considering her history of promoting outlandish conspiracy theories—it underscores a meaningful shift in MAGA sentiment. Recall her claims about “Jewish space lasers” igniting the 2018 Camp Fire in California or the unfounded allegations of a Democratic and Hollywood child trafficking conspiracy. Such rhetoric aside, Greene’s viewpoint reflects a substantial segment within MAGA who believe Trump is overly focused on international issues at the expense of domestic priorities. This perspective is gaining traction amid a domestic “affordability crisis” that is impacting Republican electoral outcomes and appears to escape Trump’s attention.

As one seasoned Republican strategist puts it, “This is a telling argument with the MAGA base, because cost of living pressures are felt most by blue-collar families. And that is the MAGA base.” The once-unified MAGA movement, which previously aligned with Trump’s every stance, now faces internal discord. A White House aide described this growing divide as “America First versus Trump First.” Critics argue the president is preoccupied with Ukraine, the Middle East, and other global engagements, which he claims have resolved multiple conflicts in pursuit of personal accolades like a Nobel Peace Prize. Meanwhile, essential domestic issues continue to demand attention and solutions.

Greene even told him to park Air Force One and stay in America. There are rumblings of discontent in the MAGA base about the open-ended bankrolling of Israel (Greene was the first congressional Republican to describe what was happening in Gaza as ‘genocide’), continued support for Ukraine (the money would be better spent in America, they say), soaring health insurance premiums and crippling grocery bills at the check-out counter. The president is not unaware of this discontent. Indeed, I’m told by one confidant close to Trump that the reason he’s prepared to dress up as a ‘peace plan’ what is essentially a Russian-drafted blueprint for Ukraine’s capitulation is that he thinks speedily disentangling America from Ukraine — whatever the reputational cost to the USA — would help assuage unrest in the MAGA base.

The cracks in the MAGA edifice are happening at a time when even more destructive forces are at work. The outer reaches of the movement are now staking out ever more bizarre positions — and fighting with former ideological soulmates like rats in a sack. Staunch but mainstream conservatives are falling out of love with the Heritage Foundation think tank, which has been seen to embrace some of MAGA’s loonier tunes. Candace Owen is at daggers drawn with her old stable, Turning Point USA. Steve Bannon picks fights with anyone that will keep him noticed. Ben Shapiro rounds sharply on Tucker Carlson. While Carlson continues on a relentless trek to his very own La La Land.

As a result, the MAGA extremities are espousing some very strange positions for a right-wing movement, further adding to the sense of division and confusion. Again, Greene has been in the vanguard of this debilitating trend. ‘If I am cast aside by the president and the MAGA political machine,’ she says, ‘and replaced by neocons, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Military Industrial War Complex, foreign leaders and the elite donor class that can never, ever relate to real Americans, then many common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well.’ And there you have it — the Right morphing into the Left.

The hard Left has long hated big business, the US military, foreign intervention, the political donations of the wealthy and disruptive technological change. Now it seems they are all enemies of the Right, too. Greene’s words could come straight from the playbooks of Bernie Sanders and AOC. Parts of the supposedly MAGA Right are even more Left than the Democratic Left. Carlson and his acolytes are now anti-Israel, pro-Kremlin, pro-Maduro, even sympathetic to the Mad Mullahs of Tehran. In their view, the West in general and the USA in particular are the cause of the injustices of the world.

Everybody else, no matter how evil, is a victim. Not so much MAGA as BAF — Blame America First. This is the worldview of the Far Left now being embraced, incredibly, by the MAGA Right. It would be hard to slip a playing card these days between Tucker Carlson and Noam Chomsky or any other hard-Left pseudo-intellectual proselytizer. Carlson has even started to promote the conspiracy theory nonsense that 9/11 was an inside job (without, of course, offering a shred of evidence).

There was a time when he dismissed such peddlers of lies as ‘parasites.’ Now, he touts a line which involves America being so evil it was prepared to bring down the Twin Towers for its own nefarious purposes. The combination of growing divisions and an outer fringe adopting the nonsense nostrums of the nutjobs is a toxic brew which, if allowed to get out of hand, could herald an incipient crisis for the MAGA movement. It is a reckless development at a time when next year’s mid-terms will be grim enough for Republicans without more self-inflicted wounds.

Vice President JD Vance, for the moment the most likely inheritor of the Trump mantle, has worked hard to keep the Greenes, Carlsons and their like onside. But they have a tendency to become ever-more extreme and, if they find a true-believer to rally behind, Vance could soon find himself on their wrong side. The Left’s penchant, even relish, for internal disputes has often kept it from power. The risk for the Right is that it now goes down the same path, while ending up with policy positions that are beyond the pale. You don’t have to buy into the hardline isolationist tendencies of his MAGA critics to realise that, if Trump wants a lasting legacy, then he really will have to spend more time tending to his own backyard.