Gavin Newsom mocks Marjorie Taylor Greene in spat over Target pulling Pride products: ‘Are you the space laser person?’

California’s governor took an opportunity to thump Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene over the far right’s efforts to force Target to stop selling products marketed to LGBT+ Americans on Wednesday.

Target executives recently announced that the chain would reevaluate the products it was offering in its stores, likely a coded promise to scale back items with messages meant to support LGBT+ rights, after facing a wave of anger from conservatives.

“For more than a decade, Target has offered an assortment of products aimed at celebrating Pride Month. Since introducing this year's collection, we've experienced threats impacting our team members' sense of safety and well-being while at work. Given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans, including removing items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior,” said the company in a statement, which went on to claim that the corporation continued to “stand” with LGBT+ Americans.

The liberal California governor, meanwhile, responded to Ms Greene after she tweeted at him, saying that “No one is attacking the gay community Gavin.”

“Are you the space laser person?” he wrote back.

Videos of Target employees being harassed have spread across social media in recent days, apparently coming in response to the false claim echoed by Ms Greene in her tweet insisting that Target is offering “tuck-friendly” bathing suits marketed to transgender people in children’s sizes; the bathing suits, in reality, are only sold in adult sizes.

The claim originated with right-wing misinformation artists and is one of many conspiracies Ms Greene has publicly latched on to both during and before her time in office.

The governor’s “space laser” tweet is a reference to a wholly unrelated conspiracy once embraced by Ms Greene in which the wealthy Rothschild family was nonsensically accused of starting wildfires in Mr Newsom’s state via satellite-based lasers. She has since walked back her support.

Conservatives have been increasingly targeting companies with calls for boycotts and tides of angry denunciations on social media over support for LGBT+ rights, a sign of the far right’s continued discontent with the gains made by that community in securing legal protections through the last decade.