AP
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) took aim at his Republican colleague, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), on Friday after the Georgia Republican criticized him for authoring a bill regarding anti-Semitism that passed the House this week.
Greene wrote on X, “Since George Soros is Jewish and funds the radical left including the Pro-Hamas Protests breaking out on college campuses, thanks to Mike Lawler’s new Antisemitism bill, college kids who speak out against Soros could be convicted of being Antisemitic.”
“Talk about opening Pandora’s box,” she added.
Soros, a Jewish billionaire who funds left-wing causes, has long been a kind of boogeyman on the American right with wild conspiracy theories floated regarding him and the policies he advocates for. PolitiFact fact-checked claims that Soros has funded the protest, writing, “Soros’ grant-making organization, Open Society Foundations, has awarded grants to two groups that the New York Post article linked to the demonstrations, but the connections between Soros’ money and specific campus protesters had several degrees of separation.”
“Under Speaker Johnson, freshman Republican Mike Lawler has caused two major failures. Expelling George Santos which allowed a Dem to win that seat and this free speech killing bill to please both of their donors. I voted NO to both of these,” Greene added on Friday.
Lawler replied to Greene, writing, “And yet in both instances, more than two thirds of Congress voted with me.”
“The bill simply codifies President Trump’s executive order into law — it does not ban the Bible or limit free speech. #MoscowMarjorie has gone off the deep end — may be the result of a space laser,” he added, referring to Greene’s wild 2018 claim that Jewish-controlled space lasers caused deadly California wildfires.
Lawler replied to a user on X who said he sounded like a leftist in his criticism of Greene, saying, “When you offer ridiculous takes and conspiracy theories, you deserve ridiculous nicknames.” Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) also blasted Greene for her criticism of Lawler.
Greene, in the past, has spun many baseless conspiracy theories based on tragic events including questioning if a plane really hit the Pentagon on 9/11 and suggesting that mass shootings are false flag operations.
“I’ve got a question for you. How do you get avid gun owners, and people who support the Second Amendment, to give up their guns and go along with anti-gun legislation? How do you do that?” Greene said in a video she released on social media before becoming a member of Congress in the wake of the mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017 that killed 60 people.
“Maybe you accomplish that by performing a mass shooting into a crowd that is very likely to be conservative, very likely to vote Republican, very likely to be Trump supporters, very likely to be pro-Second Amendment, and very likely to own guns,” she said of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
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