Republican Jewish Coalition: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Jewish laser beam comments are ‘indefensible’

Ron Kampeas

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Republican Jewish Coalition said the latest revelation about anti-Semitic conspiracy theories embraced by Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene are “indefensible and unacceptable.”

In 2018 Greene speculated that the Rothschild family may have used a laser beam from space to start a devastating California forest fire, as a means to profit from it.

“We rightly opposed Marjorie Taylor Greene in her primary election for Congress and proudly supported her GOP opponent, Dr. John Cowan,” RJC director Matt Brooks said Friday.

At the time that the RJC backed her opponent, Greene was already controversial because of her apparent embrace of the QAnon movement, which peddles wild conspiracy theories, some with anti-Semitic themes.

Brooks said it was too early to say whether the RJC would once again back a primary against Greene, because no one has yet declared whether they would run against her. Greene is popular in her district.

Brooks also would not say whether the group would advocate for Greene’s removal from U.S. House of Representatives committees. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California named Greene to the Education Committee this week, spurring outrage from Democrats, in part because she has in the past embraced theories that some school shootings were staged.

The RJC in 2019 backed the removal of another Republican, Steve King of Iowa, from committees because of his record of statements sympathetic to white supremacist views.