Far right US congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has refused to explain her infamous remarks about so-called “Jewish space lasers” during a chaotic interview with Piers Morgan.
Confronted on British TV on Tuesday night about her past statements on Facebook, Ms Greene claimed that her words had been “twisted” and insisted that she was “not antisemitic at all”.
But she declined to clarify exactly what she meant when she suggested back in 2018 that wildfires in California had been deliberately started using orbital light beams as part of a complex scheme involving the state utility company PG&E, then state governor Jerry Brown, and the Jewish Rothschild family.
Ms Greene herself never used the words “Jewish space lasers”, which was coined by her critics as a catchy shorthand for her apparent views.
“No, excuse me Piers, I never said that phrase,” insisted the Georgia Republican on Tuesday night.
“That was a lie about me. If you read my original Facebook post, I never said it...
“People have twisted my words non-stop and I guess that's just what you're going to continue to do.”
Mr Morgan shot back that he was accurately summarising her own words and challenged her to explain the actual meaning of her post, which he described as “crazy”, “lunatic”, and “complete gobbledegook”.
“You have to just accept what you wrote yourself, don't you? You deleted it, so obviously you're embarrassed by it,” he said.
Ms Greene tried to brush off the topic, instead pushing her own talking points about Hamas’ attack on Israel, the criminal charges against January 6 Capitol rioters, and her new book.
The furore over her notorious past comments were merely the opening salvo of an unedifying ten-minute interview in which the two controversial public figures repeatedly talked over each other.
Ms Greene has frequently promoted conspiracy theories both before and after her election to the US House of Representatives, from QAnon through 9/11 to Donald Trump's spurious claims of a stolen election.
Her 2018 Facebook post was far from clear, purporting to be merely asking questions about the many “coincidences” Ms Greene believed had occurred during that year's brutal California wildfires.
Through a series of implications and ironic queries, she suggested that the blaze may have been started – perhaps deliberately, perhaps accidentally – by as yet non-existent solar power satellites, capable of transmitting concentrated solar energy down to Earth in a laser-like beam.
This, she insinuated, could have been engineered or covered up by a group of figures including Mr Brown, the solar energy company Solaren, and the Rothschilds, an ancient banking dynasty who are perennial targets of antisemitic conspiracy theorists.
“If they are beaming the sun's energy back to Earth, I'm sure they wouldn't ever miss a transmitter receiving station, right??!!” Ms Greene wrote.
“What would that look like anyway? A laser beam or light beam coming down to Earth I guess. Could that cause a fire? Hmmm, I don't know. I hope not! That wouldn't look so good for PG&E, Rothschild Inc, Solaren, or Jerry Brown...”
