Four days after Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) kicked up another firestorm with her incendiary remarks comparing the House’s mask policy to the Holocaust, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) finally got around to condemning her remarks.
“Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling,” McCarthy said in a statement on Tuesday. “The Holocaust is the greatest atrocity committed in history. The fact that this needs to be stated today is deeply troubling.”
McCarthy then made a perhaps predictable pivot to attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) by nonsensically accusing her of ignoring anti-Semitic attacks, before saying that the House Republican Conference condemns Greene’s rhetoric.
Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling.
Let me be clear: the House Republican Conference condemns this language.
My full statement: https://t.co/KnliN3YbJ2
— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) May 25, 2021
McCarthy’s condemnation of Greene comes as the Georgia congresswoman refuses to back down on her inflammatory remarks likening the House’s mandatory mask mandate to the mistreatment of Jews during the Holocaust.
Greene initially complained about the House’s mask mandate during an interview on Real America’s Voice on Friday.
“You know, we can look back at a time in history when 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. “And this is exactly the type of abuse that (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi is talking about.”
Despite growing criticism from both parties over her Holocaust remarks, Greene has leaned in, repeating the offensive comparison as recently as Tuesday morning.
Vaccinated employees get a vaccination logo just like the Nazi’s forced Jewish people to wear a gold star.
Vaccine passports & mask mandates create discrimination against unvaxxed people who trust their immune systems to a virus that is 99% survivable.https://t.co/6X6VNolcA7
— Marjorie Taylor Greene ?? (@mtgreenee) May 25, 2021
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.
Everyone should be concerned about the squads support for terrorists and discrimination against unvaxxed people.
Why aren’t they? https://t.co/z1zotvegg9— Marjorie Taylor Greene ?? (@mtgreenee) May 25, 2021
Greene’s Holocaust remarks follow a long line of controversial actions from the Georgia congresswoman known to be sympathetic to the wild QAnon conspiracy theory. Greene was stripped of all her committee assignments earlier this year after her inflammatory social media posts resurfaced, which included musings about the execution of Democratic politicians who are now her colleagues.
McCarthy, for his part, did nothing to punish Greene after her social media posts surfaced. The House minority leader simply served up a statement of bad faith bothsiderism to distract from Greene’s troubling rhetoric.
“While Democrats pursue a resolution on Congresswoman Greene, they continue to do nothing about Democrats serving on the Foreign Affairs Committee who have spread anti-Semitic tropes, Democrats on the House Intelligence and Homeland Security Committee compromised by Chinese spies, or the Chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee who advocated for violence against public servants,” McCarthy said at the time.
McCarthy’s inaction came as Republicans on the House Rules Committee coalesced behind the nonsensical argument that punishing Greene through a floor vote would set a damaging precedent in punishing members for actions they took before they got elected, and give the majority party power to decide which committees members of the minority can sit on.
