President Donald Trump may love Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s loyalty, but even he doesn’t think she can win a Senate race in Georgia.
According to Axios, the president is expected to huddle soon with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to see if they can agree on a single Republican to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in 2026. And one name both seem eager to cross off the list is Greene’s.
“The president, like the governor, wants someone who can win,” a White House adviser told the outlet.
Despite being one of Trump’s loudest acolytes in Congress, Greene is apparently too toxic for a statewide run. She’s been floating bids for Senate or governor since Kemp is term-limited from running again. After Kemp took himself out of the Senate race, Greene told reporters she’s weighing her options and insisted that polling shows she could win statewide.
Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia
“The polling shows I can win the governor’s primary or I can win the Senate primary,” she said earlier this week. “That’s a choice that I can make, and I’ll give it some thought.”
It’s unclear what polling she’s talking about, though. The most recent numbers from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution paint a very different picture: In a hypothetical matchup, Ossoff beats Greene by a whopping 17 percentage points—54% to 37%. That’s the largest margin in any of the survey’s hypothetical general-election matchups. Among independents, 60% said they’d pick Ossoff. The same poll found Kemp and Ossoff in a dead heat.
Which is to say: Greene might be the worst possible candidate Republicans could put up in Georgia. And even Trump seems to get it.
“The president loves MTG. He doesn’t love her chances in a general,” the Trump adviser admitted to Axios.
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That brutal honesty seems to be sinking in. The report says Greene is “aware of the perception that she could not win a general election.” Good instinct.
Greene is a noted conspiracy theorist. She has falsely asserted that the government has used weather weapons to attack Republican areas of the country. And she’s expressed belief in QAnon, the absurd conspiracy that claims various celebrities and high-profile Democrats are Satan-worshipping pedophiles. To say the very least, she is prone to controversy.
Georgia is Republicans’ best shot to flip a Senate seat in the 2026 midterm elections, though Ossoff has been aggressively raising money and building his statewide brand. Democrats are playing defense across a brutal Senate map, including in Georgia, and are hoping to hold the line while making gains in the House.
But the GOP still hasn’t found its champion. Rep. Buddy Carter jumped into the race on Thursday, though he’s unlikely to get Trump’s backing—Axios notes he’s “not a preferred candidate,” either.
Instead, Trump and Kemp are reportedly eyeing three potential challengers: Rep. Brian Jack (a former Trump aide), Small Business Administrator and former Senator Kelly Loeffler (who lost her 2021 runoff to Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock), and Rep. Mike Collins.
Collins is reportedly the early favorite. “He lines up on the Venn diagram,” one GOP strategist said. “He’s at every [Trump] rally. He’s a trucker, so he has a blue-collar business background and would be the firebrand, workhorse candidate.”
Republicans are nervous that a weak Senate candidate could tank the whole statewide ticket. After all, 2026 will also feature a governor’s race in Georgia.
With the political winds blowing unpredictably, the party is desperate to strike the right balance between electability and MAGA loyalty.
Greene, it turns out, fails on both counts. And that’s saying something.
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