Whether you love her or hate her, Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is one of the most unconventional politicians in history. It wasn’t that long ago that politicians had to appear polite in public and play the game behind closed doors, helping them to win the crucial allies necessary to secure their careers. Greene, however, largely forged her own path, and she inexplicably became even more popular as her Republican colleagues tried to shut her out.
Greene’s rise to a powerful political office and her ability to gain legions of voters and supporters in a short period of time will inevitably be studied by political science students for years to come. What was her background like, and just how did she come from out of nowhere to become one of the nation’s most prominent politicians? Keep reading to discover the unknown truth of Marjorie Taylor Greene!
She came from humble beginnings
These days, Marjorie Taylor Greene is just as rich and powerful as many of her fellow Republican politicians that she once idolized. In fact, Yahoo! reports that she is currently worth a staggering $11 million dollars. But what may shock you–and what makes her success that much more impressive–is that she came from very humble beginnings.
Growing up in Atlanta suburbs, Greene was a relatively popular high schooler who was almost the polar opposite of her current self: she made friends easily and had no real interest in politics. That continued when she attended the University of Georgia, where she studied Business Administration and met her future husband. After she graduated, she mostly used her degree to help run the family business, even serving as its Chief Financial Officer from 2007-2011. She had other business ventures during this time, including buying and later selling a CrossFit gym, but she still showed no real interest in politics.
All of that changed thanks to Donald Trump, himself an outsider who quickly rose to power and prominence as the Republican president of the United States from 2016-2020.
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Donald Trump inspired her political career
For a very long time, Marjorie Taylor Greene was politically apathetic. She didn’t even vote in the 2012 presidential election or the 2014 midterm elections. However, once Donald Trump began campaigning for president, Greene felt genuinely engaged in the political process for perhaps the first time.
According to Newsweek, Greene later described how Trump inspired her interest in politics. “I wasn’t a political person until I found a candidate that I really liked and his name is Donald J. Trump when he ran for President,” she said. “To me, he was someone I could relate to…And I thought, ‘Finally, maybe this is someone that will do something about the things that deeply bother me.’
While Trump certainly inspired Greene’s initial political interest, she became further interested when she tried to research the alleged links between Trump and Russia. As she tried to discover the truth for herself, Greene fell further and further down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories that would eventually help her launch her career.
Falling down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole
Even as Marjorie Taylor Taylor Greene became more interested in politics, she became increasingly disillusioned with conventional news sources such as CNN and Fox News. She tried to conduct research on her own, and this led her to eventually embrace the conspiracy theories put forth by the QAnon movement.
While these theories are all over the place, the general thrust of QAnon at the time was, as Rolling Stone reports, “that Democratic politicians are engaged in a global pedophile ring and that a shadowy figure, known as Q, has been posting information online to uncover the ring and undermine the Deep State.” Accordingly, the theory holds that the “Deep State” is “an alleged secret network of government bureaucrats that were trying to undermine Trump.”
After her electoral victory (more on this in a moment), Greene “became the first congressperson to have endorsed QAnon’s outrageous and baseless claims” and eventually had to renounce the conspiracy theories she once espoused, ironically blaming her own political and media illiteracy. “Like a lot of people today, I had easily gotten sucked into some things I had seen on the internet.”
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A shocking election victory and ongoing loyalty to Donald Trump
Regardless of some of her crazier and baseless claims, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s official entrance into politics is one that most Americans could understand. During a 2019 Senate hearing on gun control, Greene traveled to Washington, DC as a private citizen to speak up for what she saw as the erosion of her Second Amendment rights. Feeling generally ignored by lawmakers on the Hill, she decided the only way her voice could be heard by these politicians–and the world–was by running for office.
Her election victory in 2020 was due to both careful planning and good timing. Republican leaders convinced her to run in Georgia’s 14th congressional district because it was already heavily conservative and because the current Congressman was not seeking reelection. She defeated her Republican primary opponent despite pushback from many conservatives for her very public association with QAnon, and she automatically won the general election because her Democratic opponent decided to move out of the state altogether.
By this point, Greene was winning many conservatives over because, like Donald Trump before her, she publicly challenged the political establishment, including prominent Republican politicians. And she remained loyal to Trump: as NPR reports, she wore a “Trump Won” face mask when she was sworn in, announcing her support for yet another conspiracy theory…that Donald Trump had somehow won the 2020 election. As with the other theories she once espoused, there remains no proof of this.
Winning a seat at the table (and winning a landslide re-election)
After she was sworn in, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s time in Congress was more than a bit like a rollercoaster ride. Her extremist views won her few political friends at first, so she was largely shut out of various committees she might have served on as a Congresswoman. Rather than let this end her political ambitions, she used her ample free time to continue spreading conspiracy theories about the 2020 election at assorted conferences and rallies. She also extensively used Twitter to spread misinformation about COVID-19, eventually getting kicked off the platform altogether in early 2022.
Interestingly, her unconventional approach to politics ended up paying off. She gradually became more accepted by other prominent conservative politicians, and then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy began regularly consulting with Greene because he had to reluctantly acknowledge that she spoke for a very large portion of American voters. As People reports, she was re-elected by a landslide in 2022, and she used her newly-secured position to support McCarthy’s political ambitions. She helped support his successful bid to become Speaker of the House, and he soon awarded her prestigious seats on both the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and the House Committee on Homeland Security. After many years, Greene now had what she wanted from the beginning: respect from her peers and a place at the table.