Marjorie Taylor Greene has never been shy about saying exactly what she thinks, but her latest break with Donald Trump comes as a suprise. In a moment that felt less like a routine disagreement and more like a warning, the Georgia Republican said the Trump administration and MAGA Republicans are “gaslighting” Americans about how brutal the cost of living has become.
She laid it out during an appearance on The Sean Spicer Show, where she pushed back on Trump’s claim that grocery prices are “at the lowest prices they have ever been.” Anyone who has looked at a grocery receipt in the past year knows that’s not true, and Greene wasn’t about to pretend otherwise. Several polls shows voters believe inflation may have reduced on paper, but not in their day to day lives.
“President Trump and his administration do deserve a lot of credit for lowering inflation and holding it steady, but that doesn’t bring prices down,” she told Spicer, adding that pretending otherwise is not just wrong, it is politically reckless. “And so gaslighting the people and trying to tell them that prices have come down is not helping.”
Greene said voters are already fed up with being told that what they are experiencing isn’t real. She pointed to grocery bills, children’s clothing, school supplies, power bills, all of it steadily piling up. “People know what they’re paying,” she said, arguing that Republicans need to stop lecturing voters and start acting like they actually understand what families are living with. “You don’t gaslight them, you don’t lecture them, and you don’t deny what’s happening.”
Her criticism wasn’t limited to Trump’s messaging, Greene also aimed at government spending from both parties, saying the Trump era COVID stimulus packages and later Democratic bills poured too much money into the economy at once. In her view, that flood helped fuel the very price spikes voters are now furious about. “Government spending drives inflation,” she said, pointing to the CARES Act and what came after it as clear examples.
The timing of Greene’s comments couldn’t be more tense as Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have spent days insisting that reports of a cost of living crisis are exaggerated, calling prices stable and blaming Democrats and the media for spinning a “con job.” Greene, meanwhile, is essentially telling Trump that voters aren’t fooled. They don’t care about arguments over indexes or trendlines when rent, food, and childcare cost more than they did a year ago.
Trump hasn’t taken her criticism quietly because in an interview this week, he dismissed her concerns and said she has “lost her way” and is “catering” to Democrats. He sounded baffled, even a little hurt, as he told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, “I don’t know what happened to Marjorie. She’s a nice woman, but I don’t know what happened.”
Greene, for her part, insists that this is not a break with Trump but an intervention. On The View last week, she said she still loves the president. What she doesn’t love, she suggested, is watching Republicans talk themselves into a message that voters already reject.
And she might have a point, it’s hard to convince people that life is getting cheaper when every trip to the store tells them otherwise.
