WASHINGTON (JTA) — Republican leaders are chastising Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for the Georgia GOP lawmaker’s latest bid to liken measures to combat the coronavirus to the Holocaust.
On Tuesday, Greene compared a supermarket’s decision to add a logo to the badges of vaccinated workers to the yellow stars that Jews were forced to wear in Nazi-occupied Europe.
“Vaccinated employees get a vaccination logo just like the Nazi’s [sic] forced Jewish people to wear a gold star,” she said on Twitter, attaching a news story.
Jeff Miller, a major Republican donor who is close to the U.S. House of Representatives minority leader, Kevin McCarthy of California, offered to give Greene a tour of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., where he is a member of the commission.
“WTF is wrong with you?” Miller, who is also a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition, asked in a tweet. “I think you need to pay a visit to the US Holocaust Museum. I’d be happy to arrange. Then maybe going forward you wouldn’t make anymore disgusting, ignorant and offensive tweets. If I’m wrong and you’re not ignorant about Holocaust … then you are disgusting.”
McCarthy weighed in a bit later, referring to Greene’s comparisons over the weekend likening mask-wearing mandates to the Holocaust.
“Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling,” he said. “Let me be clear: the House Republican Conference condemns this language.”
McCarthy attached a statement that also called on Democrats to forcefully condemn anti-Israel members in their ranks.
Also weighing in was Matt Brooks, the Republican Jewish Coalition’s director, whose group joined a rare primaries challenge to Greene last summer.
“Please educate yourself so that you can realize how absolutely wrong and inappropriate it is to compare proof of vaccination with the 6 million Jews who were exterminated by the Nazis,” Brooks said on Twitter. “You’re an embarrassment to yourself and the GOP.”
A number of Republicans were among those who criticized Greene’s equating mask mandates to the Holocaust, but these were mostly figures who are vocal in opposition to former President Donald Trump, who effectively leads the party and to whom Greene is close.
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