This is getting really ugly

Former Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene has just called out Donald Trump again and fascinatingly blames Trump for turning the right into a movement built on bullying. She is completely correct. Here is Marjorie Taylor Greene giving advice. If Republicans want to win in the midterms, which we know they are increasingly panicked about, what do they need to do? And Marjorie Taylor Greene says, well, what about maybe not having the guy at the top bullying everybody? I got to tell you, she's completely correct about this. So if you want to win the midterms, why don't you stop calling all of us names and accusing us of horrible, ridiculous things like that's absurd. And stop being a bully. You know, we got mad at the Democrats years ago when when Hillary Clinton called us deplorables. But look at what the right has become. And it's become this way, Owen, because the leader of our movement bullies people. And we need to be honest about that. Like, why do we want to become what we saw the Democrat, the Democrats called us Nazis. They called Trump Hitler. They called us deplorables. They called us all types of horrible names. They look down on us, those of us that refuse to do the lockdowns and refuse to wear a mask and refuse to get the vaccine. They accuse us of killing people, people that said the election was stolen, people that walked in open doors in the Capitol. They call us insurrectionists. They put me on trial in Georgia and tried to take my name off the ballot in 2022, accusing me of insurrection. I mean, the amount of things that all of us went to, by the way, all completely reasonable thing came on us in hate and judgment from the left is now what we have seen the right turn into name calling, accusations, bullying. And this is not this. This is how you push us away and make us go, **** you, excuse my language. **** you. I don't want to vote for you. I don't want to support you anymore. I still have my policies and my America first beliefs, but you're not going to have me stand over here and help you when you're treating me this way. And you're certainly not going to pull in the independent vote that you got in 2024. And if you don't follow through on America first and a domestic agenda and Maha and and all of the things that we we've doge, my God, doge, I thought was great. If we don't come through on those things that were promised in 2024, well, then are you really going to be shocked when you lose the midterms in 2026? Because you better expect it. You know what is most interesting about this? Her critique is like mostly good. And although all the stuff she says, oh, they criticize for this, us for this and that. Those were valid criticisms. I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene was primarily saying things that were cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs when she was a member of the House of Representatives. But what's fascinating is that her entire political identity and rise to power was built on not only loyalty to Donald Trump, loyalty that she now has renounced, but her entire rise was based on confrontation. It was based on outrage. She defended Trump through everything. She amplified the rhetoric. She normalized the tone, the bullying tone that she now admonishes Trump for. She was a perpetrator of she perpetuated it. So for her to now say the movement is damaged by Trump's behavior means that she was also someone who ruined the movement by virtue of doing a lot of the same stuff that she now criticizes. Now, if we zoom out for a second, not to make it about Marjorie Taylor Greene's hypocrisy, she is describing the problem with personality driven politics. When a political movement revolves around one dominant figure, loyalty becomes the main rule in the primary rubric for evaluating who's doing well and who's not doing well. The leader attacks, attacks critics. The leader demands obedience and defines who belongs in the movement and who doesn't belong in the movement. That's, you know, the term rhino that Trump uses Republican in name only. It is about defining and excluding. And that can create really intense unity at first as people get excited about being part of something where people are so ramped up about being part of it. But over time, it makes the movement unstable because the attacks never stop. Your allies shift in their alliances. They become targets. That is the system that Donald Trump has built. And Marjorie Taylor Greene has shifted from being on the beneficiary end of it to being on the sort of like victim or detractor end of it. Now, there's also a strategic calculation. Marjorie frames this as an election problem. She's worried Trump's behavior is going to cost Republicans support and threaten them in the midterms. That tells you something about what Republican insiders are seeing, which is they see that the chaos and the internal fighting and the brand of Trump is turning voters off unless they are really deeply in the base, really deeply in the cult. And then there's also the contradictions within MAGA. The movement built around dominance and strength, but a political culture based on dominance creates these power struggles. And if politics becomes about who humiliates who, who outcompetes for closeness to Trump, that can destabilize the base and actually hurt the movement. And I believe that that's what we're seeing right now. The politics of Trump thrive on conflict. And maybe Trump personally benefits from the conflict. He attacks opponents and then allies and former allies, and he tells it like it is and he's strong and all of that. But the circle of adversaries and enemies keeps growing, growing, growing, and it comes to include even people that used to be in your circle like Marjorie Taylor Greene. And then all of a sudden you have a problem because they've turned against you. When someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene breaks ranks as wacky as she is, it goes beyond a personal dispute. There is a strain inside this movement as it tries to keep itself together. And Marjorie Taylor Greene is pulling in the opposite direction right now. They need stability. They need to build a coalition. They need shared goals. And when you have a personality driven movement, even if the leader is orange, it doesn't even matter the color of the leader. In this case, he's orange. He could be any color. That tension is going to produce fractures. And that's what we're seeing it right now. And again, the irony is. I agree with a lot of Marjorie Taylor Greene's critique today, but she built it. She participated and built the political culture of bullying and attacks, the normalization of outrage, the normalization of personal attacks. Now she says it went too far. OK, well, the whole thing is breaking down. And that's why she's doing this. And historically, when core insiders become important critics, that is a sign that the movement may not be able to hold itself together. And boy, do I hope that it can't hold itself together when it was time for a new mattress. I didn't want to gamble on something generic. I had heard about Helix. I like that they customize the mattress based on how you sleep. I'm mostly a stomach sleeper. So I took the quiz and ended up with a model that felt tailored to me. I've had it for years. What I notice is I don't wake up with back stiffness. I don't wake up with shoulder pain. I don't toss and turn looking for a comfortable position. It's just better than my old mattress. It's more supportive, but it's still comfortable. 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