MTG Revives Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory in Time for Hurricane Milton

With another hurricane rapidly approaching, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is taking the opportunity to boost her increasingly unhinged conspiracy theories about the weather.

In a post Monday evening, Greene wrote, “Ask your government if the weather is manipulated or controlled,” re-upping her outlandish ideas that a mysterious “they” can control the climate.

The dangerous post comes after the Georgia representative also revived her antisemitic conspiracy theory about Jewish space lasers over the past week.

As MTG doubles down on her conspiracy theories, Jewish lawmakers have been targeted over the insane dog whistle.

Perhaps Greene is trying to distract from her horrible hurricane response last week, when she was missing in action, catching a football game with Donald Trump as Hurricane Helene pummeled her state.

Rapidly intensifying storms are a result of climate change, but as Hurricane Milton picks up speed, Greene is not offering her constituents anything besides her conspiracies that “climate change is the new Covid,” meaning, to her, it’s made up and controlled by the government.

Making natural disasters a cultural war issue is incredibly dangerous. On Monday, Joe Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pushed back against right-wing misinformation coming from Fox News about the hurricane response. Similarly, over the weekend, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper called for “politicians, billionaires and grifters who peddle lies during a time of crisis” to be held accountable. “Spreading false information to sow chaos hurts real people.”

It’s clear that Greene’s hurricane response is all hot air.

Nobody knows how to take advantage of a spectacle quite like Donald Trump.

On October 7, the Republican presidential nominee opted to honor the one-year anniversary of the war between Israel and Palestine by unceremoniously snapping smiling photos next to images of hostages and dancing to one of his favorite rally tracks.

During his speech, Trump suggested that the people killed in the conflict—which has so far claimed nearly 42,000 Palestinian lives as well as 1,200 Israelis, the majority of whom died during the initial Hamas attack—would be able to say they sacrificed their lives for “something very special.” He then oddly danced across the stage.

“We will have achieved the dream of some generations,” Trump said. “We are going to make this. We are going to turn this. And you can never say a total positive because all of those people that have died, but we’re going to turn this into something where they can be proud of what’s happened. They can say, ‘We sacrificed our lives for something very special.’”

Trump then walked off stage while double punching his fists into the air to “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People—one of dozens of music groups who have sued the former president for the unauthorized use of their music.

It was, all in all, a busy day full of questionable media appearances for the former president.

Speaking earlier with New York radio show Sid & Friends, Trump claimed that “nobody’s done more for the Jewish people than I have.” And in an interview with Hugh Hewitt, Trump insisted that the state of Israel—not necessarily Jewish Americans—needed to “get smart” about supporting his candidacy while speculating about the potential “waterfront property” real estate development possibilities in Gaza.

“I think that Israel has to do one thing,” Trump said. “They have to get smart about Trump, because they don’t back me. I did more for Israel than anybody. I did more for the Jewish people than anybody. And it’s not reciprocal.”

CBS’s 60 Minutes brutally roasted Donald Trump over his baseless excuses for not appearing on the show.

The Monday episode, which included an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, began with an explanation from host Scott Pelley about exactly why viewers wouldn’t be hearing from the Republican presidential nominee for the first time in more than 50 years.

“It’s been a tradition for more than half a century that the major party candidates for president sit down with 60 Minutes in October. In 1968 it was Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. This year Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump accepted our invitation, but unfortunately last week, Trump canceled,” Pelley said.

Pelley explained that the Trump campaign had requested that the 60 Minutes team meet the former president for a sit-down interview in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, as well as a meeting in Butler, Pennsylvania, to which they had agreed.

But on September 9, they received word from Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung that the campaign was still working on the logistics for interviewers to come to Butler. Days later, Cheung called to say the president had confirmed the plan.

“Then, a week ago, Trump backed out,” Pelley said.

“The campaign offered shifting explanations,” Pelley explained. “First it complained that we would fact-check the interview. We fact-check every story.”

“Later, Trump said he needed an apology for his interview in 2020. Trump claims correspondent Lesley Stahl said in that interview that Hunter Biden’s controversial laptop came from Russia,” Pelley said. “She never said that.”

“Trump has said his opponent doesn’t do interviews because she can’t handle them. He had previously declined another debate with Harris, so tonight may have been the largest audience for the candidates between now and Election Day.”

Pelley noted that “both campaigns understood this special would go ahead if either candidate backed out,” before transitioning into the interview.

During a rambling speech on Sunday, Trump claimed he’d ended the 2020 interview after Stahl incorrectly fact-checked him about Hunter Biden’s laptop. In reality, he had thrown a fit about how inappropriate it was to be asked “tough questions” before storming off.

“Ah, it’s terrible. So we’re waiting for an apology, they want to do it again,” Trump said Sunday.

“I’ll do it again, but they gotta apol—don’t you think I should make them apologize?”

In the latest 60 Minutes episode, Pelley demonstrates the power of a good fact-check. Trump’s words, and those of his campaign, don’t match up to reality—exposing his unwillingness to face it.

In a post on Truth Social Tuesday morning, Trump ranted about Harris’s interview. “The Interview on 60 Minutes with Comrade Kamala Harris is considered by many of those who reviewed it, the WORST Interview they have ever seen,” Trump wrote, before incoherently rambling about the negative “reviews” of the federal response to Hurricane Helene.

Elon Musk joined Tucker Carlson for an interview Monday night, and laughed about what he believes is a lack of assassination attempts against Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.

The tech CEO deleted an X post in mid-September after the second attempt on Donald Trump’s life, where he joked that “no one is trying to assassinate” Biden or Harris. Now he’s making it clear that he didn’t regret his words.

“Nobody has even bothered to kill Kamala because it’s pointless,” Musk said, as he and Carlson laughed. “What do you achieve? Nothing, you just bought another puppet.”

“It’s deep and true, though,” Carlson said, before Musk replied, “Nobody’s tried to kill Joe Biden. It’d be pointless.”

Last month, Musk’s comments drew the attention of the Secret Service, who announced that they were aware of the post and were looking into it. After deleting the post, Musk took to X to try and explain away his comments.

“Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on X,” Musk posted at the time. “Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text.”

This time around, Musk seems to have found a receptive audience in Carlson, although the comment still isn’t funny. It seems to be a product of his embrace of the right, like the A.I. photo he posted of Harris dressed in a red uniform with the insignia of the Soviet Union. He’s made a habit of posting misinformation about the vice president too. Musk should be more careful about what he posts, because one of his sycophants or fans might get the wrong idea.

It looks like antisemites are really latching on to Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s conspiracy theory about Hurricane Helene.

In the aftermath of the Category 4 storm, Jewish government officials have been targeted by antisemitic conspiracy theories, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer, and FEMA spokesperson Jaclyn Rothenberg have become targets of antisemitic abuse online, only days after Greene boosted an antisemitic smear of her own.

Last week, Greene amplified a right-wing conspiracy theory that the government may have manufactured the deadly hurricane.

“Yes they can control the weather,” Greene wrote on X Thursday. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.” She also seemed to imply that the government had been targeting Republican areas, which Donald Trump has also suggested.

Not only is this theory outrageously anti-science, but it is also built on an explicitly antisemitic trope. Notably, Greene’s outlandish suggestion also lacks any semblance of reason. While telling her credulous public that Democrats could rule the heavens and summon a deluge upon them, Greene failed to address why Democrats didn’t use that omnipotence to, let’s say, win in Georgia by more than 12,000 votes in 2020—a markedly more pedestrian task, surely.

Greene has not taken down the post, nor apologized for spreading misinformation.

Now criticism over the federal response to Hurricane Helene has been infused with the very same invective, as trolls place the blame for human suffering on the religious and ethnic identities of Jewish leaders.

In a Facebook post on Thursday, Republican North Carolina State Senator Kevin Corbin pleaded with his constituents to stop spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories, including one that the “government is controlling the weather from Antarctica.”