'Inflection point': Inside the Trump clash nobody saw coming

President Donald Trump is waging political war — one pundit compared it to Fort Sumter, the battle that started the Civil War — against former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, all in the Georgia district she used to represent.

"This very public spat with Marjorie Taylor Greene is the Fort Sumter of the MAGA civil war, and it started with the Epstein files and the way in which the Trump administration has mishandled this," Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, told USA Today.

Setmayer added, "The fact that she started as someone who was so vocally supportive of Donald Trump and was seen as someone who was a torch holder of MAGA for so long, for her to speak out and point out those things, particularly during the last shutdown, that was an inflection point."

Reflecting on this MAGA civil war, USA Today spoke to constituents in Greene’s former district who have turned on their own erstwhile congresswoman for criticizing Trump on issues like his close ties to the late convicted sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein.

"I didn't like her personality, I just thought she was way overboard," Carl Hunter told USA Today. "I don't know how to describe it, but I just wasn't happy with her. I'm sure she had some good points."

"She seemed like a very staunch supporter of President Trump, which I was very pleased of, plus she is here in Georgia, and then all of a sudden just quit," Michael DePaolo, a 62-year-old Air Force veteran from the Georgia city of Rome, told USA Today. "I was always taught you never quit."

Explaining the new dynamic, Georgia Republican strategist and adviser Chip Lake argued that because Greene has been “very public” about her split with Trump, “when that happens you're going to win some new people and you're going to lose some of the people that you had. Voters can have a favorable opinion of both the president and Marjorie, and still pick Donald Trump in the divorce."

Trump is endorsing state prosecutor Clay Fuller, who is so far right that he advocated tripling the budget for ICE after US Border Patrol agents shot and killed nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

"When I'm on Capitol Hill, I'm going to have President Trump's back. I'm going to have ICE agents' back," Fuller posted on X last month. Earlier this week, Trump backed Fuller but added that “we have a lot of people who want to take Marjorie 'Traitor' Greene's place. Many, many candidates and I have to choose one and they say whoever I endorse is going to win."

Greene has split with Trump on several issues, though perhaps the most conspicuous one is her opposition to Trump’s ongoing efforts to downplay the Epstein scandal.

"The reality is: the Trump Administration is not releasing the information,” Greene said about the administration’s foot-dragging on the Epstein files. “And look, I got yelled at by the president over this. This is why he called me a traitor. He called me a traitor because I would not take my name off the discharge petition. Because I stood firmly and said: No, we are going to release the Epstein files….. I'm not standing with the government. I don't support the cover-up of all of this stuff, whatever it may be. And the president got mad at me.. And he told me his friends would be get hurt."

The Trump-Greene feud got so heated that Trump even accused Greene of leaking that he would be eating at a Georgia seafood restaurant, Joe’s Seafood, so that activists could protest him there.

“Trump aides view the Joe’s Seafood debacle as a point of no return in his relationship with Greene,” Axios reported at the time based on an inside source. “Greene told Axios that any suggestion she revealed Trump’s dinner plans was ‘an absolute lie, a dangerous lie. I would never do that.'”

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