‘Marjorie is wrong’: GOP leader Kevin McCarthy condemns Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ‘appalling’ Holocaust comments

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has called fellow Republican US Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene “wrong” for comparing mask-wearing during the coronavirus pandemic to Nazi abuse towards Jews during the Holocaust.

“Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling,” Mr McCarthy said in a statement issued by his office. “The Holocaust is the greatest atrocity committed in history. The fact that this needs to be stated today is deeply troubling,”

Though Mr McCarthy was reprimanding Ms Greene, he still took the opportunity to take a shot at Democrats, claiming that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has “completely ignored” alleged antisemitic remarks from her party.

 “At a time when the Jewish people face increased violence and threats, antisemitism is on the rise in the Democrat Party and is completely ignored by Speaker Nancy Pelosi,” he wrote.

Notably absent from Mr McCarthy’s statement was any condemnation of Ms Greene’s attempt to spread mis- or disinformation about masks and Covid-19 vaccines while the US remains in the midst of the public health crisis that has killed nearly 600,000 Americas.

“Americans must stand together to defeat antisemitism and any attempt to diminish the history of the Holocaust,” he said. “Let me be clear: the House Republican Conference condemns this language.”

Mr McCarthy has faced growing calls for weeks to address her comments and behaviour in Congress and in the run-up to her election in 2020, when she appeared to endorse violent far-right comments, harassed lawmakers and amplified anti-Muslim tropes and antisemitic conspiracy theories, which promoted House Democrats to vote to strip her of her committee assignments.

While he has condemned her past remarks, Mr McCarthy defended the congresswoman and criticised Democrats for what he called a “partisan power grab”.

In more recent remarks, Ms Greene has compared the House speaker’s mask mandate for the floor of the House of Representatives to Nazis forcing Jews to wear a Star of David. Ms Greene said “this is exactly the type of abuse” she believes is taking place in Congress.

“This woman is mentally ill,” she said of the House speaker during an interview last week. “You know, we can look back in 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, and this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.”

On Friday, she defended her remarks in an interview with Arizona 12 News, saying, “I think any rational Jewish person didn’t like what happened in Nazi Germany, and any rational Jewish person doesn’t like what’s happening with overbearing mask mandates and overbearing vaccine policies.”

In a string of posts on Twitter on Tuesday, she claimed that a grocery store with employees wearing badges to indicate that they have received Covid-19 vaccines is “just like the Nazi’s [sic] forced Jewish people to wear a gold star”.