First Published:
10:41 AM PDT, May 26, 2021
Five days after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene compared mask mandates in Capitol Hill to the treatment of Jews by Nazis during the Holocaust, House Republican leaders are finally coming out to condemn her language.
“Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling,” House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy said Tuesday. “Let me be clear: the House Republican Conference condemns this language.”
Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana’s spokesperson also said of Greene’s comments in a statement Tuesday, “Rep. Scalise does not agree with these comments and condemns these comparisons to the Holocaust.”
The response comes after nearly a week of silence by Republican lawmakers, and while there have been discussions among both Democrats and Republicans about disciplinary action, it is still unclear whether she will face any punishment.
Meanwhile, Greene, who was once a staunch believer in QAnon theories, appeared to double down on her statement equating mask wearing and other coronavirus-related precautions to Nazi atrocities.
“I never compared it to the Holocaust, only the discrimination against Jews in early Nazi years. Stop feeding into the left wing media attacks on me,” Greene tweeted. “Everyone should be concerned about the squads support for terrorists and discrimination against unvaxxed people. Why aren’t they?”
She continued in a Tweet storm, “Vaccinated employees get a vaccination logo just like the Nazi’s forced Jewish people to wear a gold star.”
Greene’s original comments were spoken on the chamber floor after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that members of the House will still be subjected to the mask mandate unless everyone presents proof they have been vaccinated.
“We can look back at a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany,” Greene said at the time, according to CNN. “And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.”
Earlier this year, the first-term Georgia representative was ousted from two congressional committee assignments for spreading dangerous misinformation.
