Trump's breakup with Greene is not the same as others. But like always, there may be second chances

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ATLANTA (AP) — President Donald Trump’s chaotic political universe has at least one consistent law that rises above any other: The president has no permanent friends and no permanent enemies.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia lawmaker who announced plans to leave Congress in January, is the latest figure to test that Trumpian rule. Throughout his political career, the president has sparred with Republicans who, recognizing his grip on the party, eventually came into or returned to the fold, often in senior administration positions.

And already on Saturday, Trump referred to Greene as “a nice person,” hours after calling her a “traitor."

Yet Greene, who originated as a leading face of the “Make America Great Again” movement, supported Trump's false claims that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent and shares his pugilistic style. So she offers a notable contrast to the typical Trump roller coaster faced by other Republicans. Those mostly mainstream conservatives begrudgingly endured the president before finally citing some breaking point or tagged Trump as a threat to democracy only to join his ranks as he remade the GOP in his own image.

In the end, Greene and Trump fell out not over ideological differences or fundamental fissures over his character but rather disagreements over the Jeffrey Epstein files and health care. With her planned departure, Greene becomes the most prominent MAGA figure to break with Trump, and what that means for both of them is an open question.

“I have fought harder than almost any other elected Republican to elect Donald Trump and Republicans to power,” Greene said in her Friday video announcing her plans.

“It’s all sort of out of left field,” said Kevin Bishop, a former longtime aide to Sen. Lindsey Graham, a stark example of a Trump critic-turned-ally. What’s clear, Bishop said, is that Trump, even with lagging approval ratings overall, retains “great sway over the activists and, frankly, all corners of the Republican Party.”

Trump was not always the undisputed center of Republican power and identity. Even as he took control of a crowded GOP presidential field in 2016, his rivals pummeled him.

Graham, the South Carolina senator, called him a “kook” and a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” Within a few years, he was among Trump’s biggest fans in the Senate, calling him “my president.”

Marco Rubio, then a Florida senator and now Trump’s secretary of state, called him a “con artist” and “the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency.” He and Trump exchanged veiled insults about each other’s male anatomy.

During that same campaign, a young author and future Vice President JD Vance wrote a New York Times op-ed titled: “Mr. Trump Is Unfit For Our Nation’s Highest Office.” Vance’s former roommate disclosed a text message in which Vance compared Trump to Adolf Hitler, Nazi Germany’s authoritarian author of the Holocaust. By 2021, Vance was a first-time Senate candidate from Ohio who sang Trump’s praises on immigration, trade and other matters.

For Republicans who did not make that about-face, their political careers nearly always faced dead ends. Those recognizing the cost of their decisions course corrected.

Sen. Bill Cassidy was among the few Republicans who voted to convict Trump after he left office in 2021. Yet eying reelection in 2026, the Louisiana physician provided Trump the deciding committee vote to confirm the controversial Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary.

Greene noted the trends.

“Most of the establishment Republicans who secretly hate him and who stabbed him in the back and never defended him against anything have all been welcomed in right after the election,” she said.

Bishop said those flips aren’t simply about politicians being politicians but about Trump bringing the vibes of real estate and marketing to politics.

“He views the presidency as slightly more transactional than maybe the way people in politics view the world,” Bishop said. “A businessman says, ‘Well, we fought over this deal. But in a couple of years maybe we can work together and put together another deal.’”

Bishop, who worked in Graham’s Senate office throughout Trump’s first presidency, said Trump “came out of the hospitality industry” and, despite his harshest policies and rhetoric, is less inclined to judge political opponents and allies in ideological or philosophical terms.

It's a trait Trump put on display in the Oval Office on Friday in a friendly meeting with New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist the president has previously mislabeled as a communist.

Mamdani broke through, perhaps, by doing something Trump appreciates most: winning. Bishop said Graham did it with “a great sense of humor” that Trump appreciated and because they bonded on the golf course. “You spend three or four hours on a golf course,” he said. “That’s a lot of time to get to know someone.”

Graham once offered a simpler explanation, telling The New York Times that his evolution on Trump was a way “to try to be relevant.”

It’s notable that one of Greene’s fights –- releasing the Epstein files -– went her way, not Trump’s. The president framed his retreat as something he was fine with all along. Even on health care, Greene can claim some measure of victory. The White House and GOP Hill leaders have countered expiring health insurance tax credits by offering a different potential subsidy: direct payments to consumers as they shop for polices.

Greene certainly has options. She has personal financial security, with her ethics disclosures suggesting a net worth in the many millions of dollars. She has 1.6 million followers on X. She has long been a feature on the conservative media circuit — notably dating Brian Glenn, a right-wing White House correspondent for Real America’s Voice. And her recent break with Trump came with appearances on mainstream media, including ABC’s “The View.”

She could still run for Georgia governor, which will be an open seat, or for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. But Greene acknowledged Trump’s potential power in her heavily Republican House district, saying she wanted to spare her constituents an ugly primary fight.

“Once I left her, she was gone because she would never have survived the primary,” Trump told reporters. He added in a separate NBC interview that the congresswoman has “got to take a little rest.”

Still, the president rebuffed any suggestion that there is any need for “forgiveness” in their relationship, and he told NBC, “I can patch up differences with anyone.”

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Associated Press writer Will Weissert in Washington contributed to this report.