Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia lashed out at a reporter who questioned her about a now-infamous Facebook post she made suggesting the California wildfires could be attributed to a wealthy Jewish family using space lasers to ignite them.
Last year, Greene was widely condemned for espousing the belief the 2018 California wildfires were not caused by climate change but some kind of "space laser" that had set the state ablaze.
The term "Jewish space lasers" began to trend on Twitter after one of Greene's older Facebook posts—in which she shared the conspiracy theory—resurfaced.
In it, she said Pacific Gas and Electricity (PG&E) and renewable energy startup Solaren sent solar power generators to space funded by the Rothschilds, a family of Ashkenazi Jewish billionaires who have often been the target of antisemitic conspiracy theories.
But according to Greene, she cannot be blamed for the post because she wrote it before she entered office, when she was just "a regular American."
You can watch her defense in the video below.
When the reporter told Greene she was "talking about the Rothschild family, which has been at the center of antiSemitic conspiracies since the 19th century," Greene insisted she "did not know that."
She added:
"[In 2018] I was a regular American. Never been in politics."
"I couldn’t have told you some people back in politics or families' names, don’t know their backgrounds.”
When challenged on that statement by the reporter, who noted "antisemitism is on the rise at an alarming rate," Greene was adamant she is "against" antisemitism in all its forms.
"I’m fully against antisemitism. You’re mixing two things together."
"You’re accusing me of something I did not do, and then you’re trying to blame me for antisemitism.”
Many criticized Greene for her statements and called her out for her revisionist approach to her own words.
Greene's own party has never sufficitnely repudiated her for her remarks.
The Republican Party also recently failed to condemn Republican Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, who denied he planned to attend a far-right conference with ties to White nationalist groups on April 20, the birthday of German Nazi Party leader and Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Hitler.
Meanwhile, prominent Republicans like former President Donald Trump's ex-chief strategist Steve Bannon have pushed replacement theory, a conspiracy theory that states White European populations and their descendants are being demographically and culturally replaced with non-European peoples.
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