Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) insists she hasn’t changed, but the conservative firebrand’s deepening splits with her party on everything from Jeffrey Epstein to health care subsidies are puzzling and exasperating her fellow Republicans.

Greene forged her political identity in Congress as a fierce Trump loyalist, defending the president and Jan. 6, 2021, protesters, and attacking Democrats at every turn.

But with President Trump back in the White House, Greene has put herself on the opposite side of many of the president’s positions, and on somewhat of an island among Republicans. 

In a phone interview for this story, Greene said she’s not the one who has changed, pointing to her criticism of congressional Republicans and their lack of action on health care in her first 2020 campaign.

“I am 100 percent the same person today as I was when I ran for Congress,” Greene said.

Greene said it is “ridiculous” to suggest her positions have put her on an island in the GOP. “I’m actually representing what a lot of Americans fully support.”

“My job title is not ‘cheerleader for Republicans in Congress.’ I’m not talking about the president. I’m talking about Republicans in Congress. And Republicans in Congress are the ones that need to come up with a plan to fix the health insurance,” she later added.

Yet several of Greene’s House GOP colleagues and GOP sources told The Hill that they are more thrown off than ever by Greene’s positions, and wish she would take a different strategy to achieve her goals.

“Whether it’s Gaza, whether it’s Epstein, or whether it’s now the ACA [Affordable Care Act] credits, she’s been 180 degrees opposite of Trump,” one House Republican vented. “In fact, she’s been more Biden than she has been Trump.”

Greene over the summer dubbed Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide.” She was one of just four Republicans to sign on to a discharge petition to release files related to the sex offender Epstein, in defiance of White House wishes. Last week, she went against GOP leaders’ shutdown messaging by expressing alarm at the expiring ObamaCare tax credits that could double insurance premiums for millions, saying Republicans have no plan to address the issue.

She racked up more breaks with Republicans and Trump in a media blitz over the last week including a surprising critique of the Trump administration’s mass deportations, while noting her experience owning a construction company.

“We have to do something about labor, and that needs to be a smarter plan than just rounding up every single person and deporting them just like that,” Greene said in an episode of “The Tim Dillon Show” podcast released over the weekend. “I’m going to get pushback on that, but I’m just living in reality from here on out.”

In a switch from their pattern of villainizing Greene, Democrats are praising her health care stance. One press release from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee quoted a spokesperson simply saying: “Marjorie Taylor Greene is right.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) featured a screenshot of her social media post in a press conference.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) downplayed the significance of Greene’s concerns in a press conference last week. 

“Congresswoman Greene does not serve on the committees of jurisdiction that deal with that, those specialized issues, and she’s probably not read in on some of that,” Johnson said.

Greene dismissed frustrations from her colleagues who had hoped and expected she would be more of a team player in the GOP trifecta.

“That frustration with me only exists here in this political bubble,” Greene argued, pointing to calls to her office about her health care stance just that day: Out of 224 calls, 175 were supportive and 40 were against, she said.

Greene maintains she is a staunch Trump supporter, even as she told NBC News she is not a “blind slave” to the president. But she declined to say whether she has talked to him recently.

“I don’t talk about my relationship with my mom and how many times I talk to her, and I don’t talk about how many times I talk to my kids and what day I talk to them,” Greene told The Hill. “I don’t have to explain that. You don’t hear me running out and saying, ‘I talked to the president today.’”

Greene did mention bringing up concerns to Trump on the phone during an appearance on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast earlier this month.

She has, however, been open about her conflicts with the president’s aides and consultants often saying Trump is getting bad advice or the wrong information when he differs from her on an issue.

After an unnamed White House official circulated a statement to press warning that signing a discharge petition to force a vote to release the Epstein files “would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration,” Greene said in a Real America’s Voice interview that whoever said that was a “coward” for attacking members like her who defended Trump after Jan. 6.

Greene was also discouraged from running for Senate by those in Trump’s orbit, with The Wall Street Journal reporting in May that Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio commissioned a poll showing her trailing behind Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) by double digits. Greene said at the time she “wanted nothing to do with the Senate,” criticizing the consultants and aides who leaked the poll and private conversations, insinuating they were working against her because they were not on her payroll.

Pushing back on the sense that she is not a team player or working against the president, Greene pointed to her votes for the “one big, beautiful bill” of Trump’s tax cuts and Medicaid reforms, and for GOP continuing resolution (CR) stopgap funding measures.

“I have voted for the team party bills that I didn’t necessarily like. Didn’t like them. I wasn’t big on the ‘one big’ I thought there were some things I really did like, but there was others I didn’t,” Greene told The Hill. “I don’t ever want to vote for another CR, they make me want to vomit, but I voted for the two CRs this year. I’m supporting the president by voting for a CR. This is what he wanted.”

“And so I don’t see how they give me criticism for standing up and saying back to what I’ve always said – health insurance is crushing Americans, and we’ve got to do something about it,” Greene said.

She also made a surprise announcement at a House GOP political meeting last month that she would transfer $240,000, a hefty sum, to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Many of Greene’s starkest recent departures from Trump and other Republicans have come in the months since her longtime spokesperson and deputy chief of staff, Nick Dyer, left her office in May. Dyer was widely known in the press corps and on Capitol Hill, landing him on The Hill’s 2024 Notable Staffers list. 

Greene said the staff change has not affected her messaging. “I always wrote my tweets. I always did my own communications.”

Dyer told The Hill: “It was an honor to work for Congresswoman Greene as she led the fight to reshape Congress and put America First. I’m proud of what we accomplished in a few short years.”

Another longtime aide who ran Greene’s political operations since her first 2020 campaign, Isaiah Wartman, left her team after the 2024 election to join the White House as a special assistant to the president for personnel.

Even as Greene has repeatedly ruffled feathers over the years, Republican leaders have extended olive branches as they tried to harness her star power.

Rather than exiling her as a conspiracy theorist and a pariah, then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) brought Greene in, legitimizing the firebrand early in her congressional career. Their alliance contributed to McCarthy critics in the House Freedom Caucus kicking Greene out.

Greene’s support didn’t do much to save him from being ousted by a crew of other GOP firebrands. But after initially clashing with Johnson and making an unsuccessful move to oust him after he pushed Ukraine funding through Congress, Greene seemed to be repeating the antagonist-to-power ally path.

After a “productive” meeting with Johnson after the 2024 election, news broke that Greene would chair a “DOGE” subcommittee under the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and Greene later backed Johnson for Speaker.

She hinted at higher ambitions, publicly musing about becoming Homeland Security secretary before Trump named Kristi Noem for that role.

Still, she held hearings on defunding PBS and NPR, and Congress later approved the White House’s request to cancel public broadcasters. The House passed two of her bills: one to officially rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, and another to require the Department of Homeland Security to publish a monthly report on foreigners deemed security risks attempting to enter the U.S.

Her Protect Children’s Innocence Act, a bill she’s led for years to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth, advanced out of the House Judiciary Committee this year. While the Department of Justice last month transmitted and endorsed a different bill led by first-term Rep. Bob Onder (R-Mo.) intended to codify Trump’s executive order on gender-affirming care for minors, Greene said she has a commitment that her own legislation will get a floor vote. 

But leaders can expect that Greene will have no shortage of critiques. Johnson said on “Fox News Sunday” he had a “thoughtful” conversation with Greene in recent days in wake of her latest health care criticisms.

And those high expectations for Republicans are at the core of Greene’s politics.

“I’m sick and tired of Republicans in Congress not passing the agenda, not doing what they say they’re going to do, not governing the way they campaign,” Greene said.