Marjorie Taylor Greene Excuses Her “Jewish Space Lasers” Comment In A Very Marjorie Taylor Greene Way

Since taking office earlier this year, Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a QAnon conspiracy theorist, has been exposed for making a number of egregious racist and transphobic remarks. Greene's old Facebook posts have showed her glorifying violence against Democratic politicians, supporting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and displaying disturbing thoughts about school shootings.

In one post, on which New York magazine reported earlier this year, Greene suggested that the 2018 California wildfires were started by space lasers controlled by the Rothschild banking firm, instead of something more probable like climate change. The claim is rooted in a long history of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the Rothschild family, Vox reported. After NYMag writer Jonathan Chait described Greene's theory about what he called "Jewish space lasers," it didn't take long for the term to start trending on Twitter. 

Now, Greene is now walking back these comments — but she's not taking responsibility for them. Instead, she's blaming the far-right's favorite boogeyman, the "radical left."

"This is a story that some leftist 'journalist' — really he's an activist — wrote a hit piece on me and titled it 'Jewish Space Lasers,'" Greene told Newsmax TV. "You know, the left-wing media, they just run the same lies over and over again and they call me an anti-Semite and say that I said something like Jewish space lasers, and I never did."

Greene told Ami Magazine, which caters to the Orthodox Jewish community, that she didn't know the Rothschilds were Jewish until recently — it might just as well have been non-Jewish people who started the wildfires with space lasers, according to the congresswoman. She added, "it really hurts to be called 'anti-Semite' or 'racist.' No one has ever called me that before in my life until the left-wing media decided to attack me."

Despite her attempts to appear otherwise, Greene is no less of an extremist than she was when she took office. Just this week, Greene voted against the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act. To explain her vote, she made a transphobic argument on Twitter, writing that the bill would be a violation of "girls and women's rights by destroying God's creation, male and female." Her office claimed to CNBC on Friday morning that Twitter suspended her account as a result.

Meanwhile, House Democrats are moving to expel her from Congress for advocating "violence against our peers, the speaker, and our government," said California Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez, who introduced the resolution Friday. In February, the U.S. House voted to remove her from her committee assignments over the statements supporting conspiracy theories and advocating violence against other members of Congress.