\n<\/p>\n
When Jack Abramoff dominated Washington lobbying in the 1990s and early 2000s, he observed that there were two kinds of people in town: those who \u201cget the joke\u201d and those who don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Those who got the joke understood that all of the city\u2019s talk of ideas and principles was flimflam to conceal self-enrichment at the public\u2019s expense. Those who didn\u2019t\u2014didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
On the same day that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned, The<\/em> New York Times<\/em> reported accusations that President Donald Trump\u2019s handpicked director of the Kennedy Center, Richard Grenell, had used the fine-arts institution\u2019s $268 million budget to dole out favors and enrich friends and allies. If the claims\u2014which Grenell disputes\u2014are correct, Abramoff would recognize a fine example of \u201cgetting the joke.\u201d<\/p>\n Greene did not get the joke. Elected to Congress in Georgia in 2020, she became one of the loudest voices in American life for crackpot conspiracy claims: Pizzagate, QAnon, 9\/11 trutherism, and a fantasy that California wildfires might have been caused by space lasers controlled by Jewish bankers. She repeated 2020-election denialism and promoted Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s propaganda about his war on Ukraine.<\/p>\n For a long time, Greene\u2019s seemingly fathomless gullibility qualified her as a MAGA leader in Congress. But the gullibility actually did have a limit. Sometime after her election, she began to realize that she\u2019d been made a fool of.<\/p>\n Of all the ridiculous things Greene believed, perhaps the single most ridiculous was that Trump, of all people on earth, was leading a heroic fight against a global network of pedophiles.<\/p>\n Trump has a long and ample record on the sexual abuse of vulnerable people by powerful men. He\u2019s for it. \u201cWhen you\u2019re a star, they let you do it,\u201d as he explained. He has been accused of sexual assault by about two dozen women. One of them won a multimillion-dollar defamation verdict against him after he called her a liar. He boasted to a radio interviewer about intentionally walking into the changing room of a teen beauty pageant that he sponsored. He fantasized aloud about dating his daughter. He maintained a close friendship for years with Jeffrey Epstein, knowing full well that the financier liked girls \u201con the younger side,\u201d as Trump told New York<\/em> magazine in 2002. Even before Trump went into full cover-up mode about Epstein this year, you had to be as thick as a pallet of bricks to imagine that Donald Trump would want justice for sex-abuse victims.<\/p>\n MAGA-world insiders got the joke. They knew that some of their supporters had convinced themselves that the Democratic Party was led by Satan-worshipping, child-sacrificing-ritual cannibals. They also understand that any actual investigation of Epstein regarding child abuse had to be shut down, lest it implicate Epstein\u2019s former friend and fellow accused sex offender Donald Trump. MAGA insiders played games with the Epstein story, as J. D. Vance did in a tweet during the Joe Biden years: \u201cWhat possible interest would the US government have in keeping Epstein\u2019s clients secret? Oh \u2026\u201d Vance was tickling the paranoia of the crazy fringe\u2014without committing to any specific action that might be embarrassing to Epstein\u2019s most intimate associates.<\/p>\n The double game was best symbolized by an incident in February 2025. Attorney General Pam Bondi invited 15 right-wing social-media influencers to the White House, where she distributed thick, white binders labeled, The Epstein Files: Phase 1<\/span>. The binders in fact contained no new material of significance. Even the influencers themselves carefully admitted their disappointment. But what could they do? The joke must go on.<\/p>\n But maintaining the joke became more difficult in the fall of 2025. Even as the FBI and Department of Justice reversed former promises of transparency on the Epstein issue, materials began to leak from the deceased financier\u2019s estate: a birthday greeting to Epstein that bears Trump\u2019s signature and features a cartoon image of a naked woman; emails from Epstein himself attesting to his close relationship with Trump\u2014including one that described Trump spending hours alone with one of Epstein\u2019s trafficked victims.<\/p>\n Doubts spread among the non-joke-getters. Doubts expressed themselves in murmurings, then in open rebellion. Republican House members joined Democrats in supporting a discharge petition to urge the release of Epstein materials from the DOJ and FBI.<\/p>\n Trump resisted for many weeks. He called the Epstein story a \u201choax,\u201d his go-to move for maximally damaging accusations. He endorsed primary challenges and other pressures against Republicans who persisted on the Epstein trail after had Trump ordered them to stop. The speaker of the House, a close Trump ally, kept the chamber closed for weeks to give the president time to push Republican petition signatories to reverse themselves. In the end, it was Trump who reversed himself. He had to accept a vote to release the Epstein materials and then look for more subtle ways to continue covering up whatever it is that Trump wants to conceal.<\/p>\n But somewhere along the way, Greene\u2019s defection became more radical and permanent. On November 14, Trump posted on his social-media platform about his efforts to explain the joke to her:<\/p>\n It seemed to all begin when I sent her a Poll stating that she should not run for Senator, or Governor, she was at 12%, and didn\u2019t have a chance (unless, of course, she had my Endorsement \u2014 which she wasn\u2019t about to get!). She has told many people that she is upset that I don\u2019t return her phone calls anymore, but with 219 Congressmen\/women, 53 U.S. Senators, 24 Cabinet Members, almost 200 Countries, and an otherwise normal life to lead, I can\u2019t take a ranting Lunatic\u2019s call every day. I understand that wonderful, Conservative people are thinking about primarying Marjorie in her District of Georgia, that they too are fed up with her and her antics and, if the right person runs, they will have my Complete and Unyielding Support.<\/p>\n The joke still eluded Greene. Trump called her a \u201ctraitor\u201d on camera and shrugged off the death threats she received. Efforts to recruit a primary challenger to her accelerated. As the split widened between Greene and Trump, the embattled congresswoman began to receive friendlier media attention: a respectful interview on CNN, a guest appearance on The View<\/em>.<\/p>\n Gullible as Greene was about crackpot theories and her political associations, she seems to have been clear-eyed about her own direct personal interests. She was one of the most active and successful stock traders in Congress, in a number of cases betting for or against companies about which she likely had advance information. She timed her resignation to take effect two days after her congressional pension vested. She\u2019s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington<\/em> only if the cinematic Mr. Smith had returned home to Montana hugely enriched by timely speculations on land holdings near the Boy Ranger camp he championed.<\/p>\n But she never did get the joke on the biggest joke in town, the joke that MAGA is about anything more than manipulation, exploitation, corruption, lust, and cruelty. She seems to have sincerely believed the lies that shrewder players merely mouthed. She gained her own millions without appreciating that her allies were scheming for billions. She balked at the self-abasement before every one of Trump\u2019s whims that is indispensable to MAGA survival and success. Her failure on those scores is her one service to the country\u2014because it helps other Americans, the joke\u2019s ultimate victims, better understand what is happening to them and why.<\/p>\n