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By Jordan King
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A photograph of several prominent former allies of President Donald Trump gathered around a table in open defiance of the administration has underscored growing fault lines within the conservative movement, highlighting a bitter falling out over foreign intervention and government transparency.
The image, posted Saturday by former Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, features Greene alongside her husband, Brian Glenn; conservative commentator Tucker Carlson; Kentucky Republican Representative Thomas Massie; and Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC).
"We said no more foreign wars and we meant it and supported Donald Trump because he made that promise," Greene wrote in a X post that has garnered more than 9.5 million views. "But he’s betrayed us all. Our commitment is America First for all Americans, right, left, and center. The movement has begun."
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Carlson shared Greene's post with the caption: "MAGA was betrayed. We all were. It's time for a new path forward."
The gathering brings renewed attention to the policy and personal disputes that transformed once-staunch MAGA loyalists into some of the president's most vocal critics.
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Greene was once one of Trump’s strongest defenders in Congress, backing his claims about the results of the 2020 election, opposed his second impeachment and regularly appeared at his rallies.
The first clear cracks appeared in June 2025 after Trump ordered U.S. strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites. Greene said the decision “feels like a complete bait and switch” on the MAGA agenda.
“I got elected on the exact same campaign promises that President Trump got elected on,” she told CNN at the time. “We promised no more foreign wars, no more regime change.” She said there was a “very big divide” among Republican voters over the strikes, although she continued to support the president.
The issue that finally ended their alliance centered on the Jeffrey Epstein files. Greene said she met survivors in September 2025 and came to believe their accounts.
She later told The New York Times Magazine that Trump told her during their final phone call that releasing the files connected to the late convicted sex offender would hurt his friends, which Trump has denied.
“Epstein was everything,” Greene said. “I stood for women who were raped when they were 14 years old. And the president that I fought for for five years called me a traitor for that. And so that changed the landscape of things.”
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Trump withdrew his endorsement of Greene in November 2025 and threatened to support a primary challenger against her. He accused her of moving to the left and said all she did was “complain, complain, complain.” He later called her “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Greene” and a “disgrace” to the Republican Party.
Days later, Greene announced that she would resign from Congress on January 5, 2026, rather than face a Trump-backed primary campaign. She said “loyalty should be a two-way street” and that she refused to be a “battered wife” waiting for the relationship to improve. Trump welcomed her decision as “great news for the country.”
After she left Congress, Greene opposed Trump’s war with Iran and warned that sending U.S. ground troops into the country would cause a “political revolution” at home.
“If you send in U.S. military troops into Iran, there is going to be a political revolution in America,” Greene wrote on X in May. “We said no more foreign wars and we meant it.”
The former congresswoman has also broken with Trump over his support for Israel. She accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza and opposed continued U.S. aid to the country. Israel has denied committing genocide. In her resignation statement, she said “America First” should mean putting Americans first “with no other foreign country ever being attached” to it.
Greene later said she was finished supporting the Republican Party, accusing it of abandoning its voters.
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Tucker Carlson
Carlson, a former Fox News host, was one of Trump’s most influential supporters in conservative media. He interviewed Trump during the 2024 campaign, appeared with him at rallies and spoke at the Republican National Convention (RNC).
Their public split also began in June 2025 as Trump considered joining Israel’s attacks on Iran. Carlson warned on his show and podcast that direct U.S. involvement would betray Trump’s promise to avoid new wars and could risk dragging the United States into another prolonged Middle East conflict.
He argued that the push for intervention reflected a broader divide within the Republican Party between those willing to support military action abroad and those aligned with a more isolationist “America First” approach.
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In June 2025, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that IRAN CANNOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!” He also dismissed Carlson’s influence, telling reporters: “Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen.”
The clash briefly cooled after Trump said Carlson had called him and apologized for making comments that were “a little bit too strong.” Trump called him a “nice guy,” while Carlson continued to argue against U.S. military action.
But the divide deepened after the U.S. and Israel launched their war against Iran this past February. Carlson again accused Trump of abandoning the anti-war message that had helped return him to office.
He eventually apologized for helping Trump win the 2024 election.
“I campaigned for him—I mean, we’re implicated in this for sure,” he told his brother on his podcast. “In very small ways, but in real ways, you and me and millions of people like us are the reason this is happening right now.”
“I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people,” Carlson added. “It was not intentional.” He said he would be “tormented by it for a long time” and acknowledged that there had been warning signs about Trump: “Clearly, there were signs of low character. We knew that.”
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Thomas Massie
Massie was never as closely tied to Trump as Greene or Carlson, but he endorsed him in the 2024 election after initially backing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the Republican primary. The libertarian-leaning Kentucky congressman has long built his reputation on opposing government spending and foreign military action, even when that means voting against his own party.
The pair first clashed in March 2020 when Massie tried to force a recorded vote on a $2 trillion COVID-19 relief package. Trump called him a “third rate grandstander” on social media and urged Republicans to “throw Massie out” of the party. Massie won his primary that year.
In March 2025, after the congressman was the only House Republican to vote against a Trump-backed government funding bill, Trump again called him a “grandstander” and said he would “lead the charge” to defeat him in a primary.
Massie later voted against Trump’s signature tax and spending package, arguing that it would add too much to the national debt. But foreign policy and the Epstein files turned the long-running dispute into a sustained campaign by Trump to remove him from Congress.
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In June 2025, Massie introduced a bipartisan resolution aimed at stopping Trump from taking the U.S. into a war with Iran without congressional approval. “The Constitution does not permit the executive branch to unilaterally commit an act of war against a sovereign nation that hasn’t attacked the United States,” he said. “The ongoing war between Israel and Iran is not our war.”
Massie renewed that challenge after the U.S. and Israel bombed Iran in February. He argued that Trump lacked congressional authorization for the war and warned that military action would not distract people from the administration’s handling of the Epstein files.
Massie had worked with Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, to force the release of the Epstein records, despite resistance from Trump and Republican leaders. He later summed up his disputes with the president by telling CNN: “I vote with the president 91 percent of the time. The 9 percent of the time my party is taking up for pedophiles, bankrupting this country or starting another war, I don’t vote with them.”
“They want 100 percent compliance,” he added. “That’s why they’re trying to take me out.”
Trump endorsed former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein against Massie during the most recent primary campaign. He called Massie a “nutjob,” “the worst Republican congressman in history” and a “true negative force.” Gallrein defeated Massie in May after what the Associated Press described as the most expensive U.S. House primary in history.
Massie remains in Congress until his term ends in January. After losing the primary, he said he would use his remaining time in office to oppose Trump more forcefully. “I’ve got seven months left,” Massie said during his concession speech.
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Joe Kent
Kent was the only person in the photograph who had served in Trump’s second administration. A retired Army Special Forces officer and former CIA employee, he completed 11 combat deployments.
Kent, who, like the others, opposes foreign wars, sees the issue as personal. His wife, Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent, was killed in a 2019 suicide bombing in Syria. He later ran twice for Congress as an “America First” Republican, receiving Trump’s endorsement in both campaigns.
Trump nominated Kent to lead the NCTC in February 2025, and the Senate confirmed him in July by a 52-44 vote. He remained in the post when the U.S. and Israel launched their war against Iran in February 2026.
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However, he resigned the following month, saying he could not “in good conscience” support the conflict. In a letter to Trump, he said Iran had “posed no imminent threat to our nation” and accused Israel and its supporters in the U.S. of pushing the country into war.
“Until June of 2025, you understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation,” Kent wrote to Trump.
Trump responded that Kent was “weak on security” and said his departure was good for the administration.
“I didn’t know him well, but I thought he seemed like a pretty nice guy,” Trump said. “But when I read his statement, I realized that it’s a good thing that he’s out because he said that Iran was not a threat. Iran was a threat to every country.”
After leaving the administration, Kent said senior officials with concerns about the war had not been given a chance to present them directly to Trump. He argued that the decision was shaped by a limited group of advisers and Israeli pressure rather than a full debate within the administration. The White House and other national security officials rejected his account and have repeatedly insisted that Iran poses an imminent threat.
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Contact Newsweek editors for this story: Tobias Meyjes and Anthony Murray.
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