So Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) decided last Friday to call it quits in Congress, after Donald Trump attacked her for leading the charge to release the files on Jeffrey Epstein. Greene learned the hard way that loyalty to Trump is a one-way street, but she did schedule her departure to ensure that she will draw a Congressional pension once she turns 62. (Its a modest $8,717 annually.)

Greene lashed out at Trump in her video announcement, comparing herself to a “battered wife.” But what was much more interesting was the series of issues that she cited to show her disillusionment with the Trump-led GOP. The Epstein files ranked on her list of complaints, but they weren’t the only ones. She also cited Republican failure to address affordability and the cost of health care, two issues that are generally the Democrats’ strongest talking points.

The fact is, the MAGA world is beginning to show cracks. Trump has set himself up as synonymous with MAGA. “I know what MAGA wants better than anybody else,” Trump said in an interview this month. But the problem with Trump is that he likes telling people what they want to hear. He doesn’t necessarily want to deliver on those promises.

For a long time, his followers were content to agree that Trump and MAGA were one and the same. That enabled Trump to turn the Republican Party into a cult of personality. (Spineless Republican leaders were too afraid to stop him.) In his first term, Trump could complain about the “deep state” blocking him, but that doesn’t work this time around. He controls all three branches of government, and his loyalists willingly carry out his orders. Now, when Trump promises something will happen and it doesn’t (or vice versa), his followers question the disconnect.

Releasing the Epstein files is the clearest example of a promise that has come back to bite Trump. But it’s hardly the only one. Most of the issues fly under the radar. MAGA diehards love Trump‘s vicious deportation policy, but they are infuriated that he’s willing to give H-1B visas to skilled foreign workers. After promising to put America first, Trump has angered MAGA by giving $20 billion to Argentina (at the expense of American soybean farmers) and threatening to go to war with Venezuela.

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Even the corruption in the Trump administration is angering MAGA warriors, although they are steering clear of Trump’s own money-making efforts. FBI Chief Kash Patel, who got his job because of his MAGA credentials, is now a target of MAGA activists for using a government jet to see his girlfriend – whom Patel calls a “country music sensation” – sing at a wrestling match.

MAGA is as much a religion as it is a political movement (which is why Christian nationalism is so integral to it), so any deviation from principle is heresy. But what MAGA is bumping up against is whether the word of God and the man appointed by God to carry out his will are one and the same.

The rub is that the only principle that has guided Trump is his own self-interest. He has impulses, which align with his followers and animate them, but no fixed ideology beyond himself. That is why he can be charmed by a figure like New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, who represents everything that MAGA despises. The picture of Trump beaming at Mamdani drove MAGA round the bend.

Impulses may work for Trump, but not for a movement. Increasingly, the Republican Party is at war with itself over what it represents. Is it the party of white supremacists and neo-Nazis, like Nick Fuentes? Or is it the party fighting anti-Semitism? Is it a populist movement that truly supports cheaper health care and free IVF? Or is it the party of the corporate elite who dine at Mar-a-Lago?

By his actions or his words, Trump has at one time or another been supportive of all of these directions, some much more than others. He’s a mass of contradictions.

And he’s old. At 79, the clock is ticking on Trump. Constitutionally, he’s barred from a third term, but he’s made it clear won’t necessarily stop him. Yet his age means that he is time-limited one way or another, and who inherits his movement is up for grabs.

What the battle within the party shows is that no one has the personality power that Trump has. (J.D. Vance certainly doesn’t.) The Republican Party won’t be the party of whims as it was under Trump. But other than foaming-at-the-mouth hatred of minorities and trans people, what does that mean? A personality cult without a personality is just going to drift. In the meantime, as Trump is finding out, even a personality cult has its limits.

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