US president congratulates Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has pushed QAnon theory and was in a photo with former KKK leader, on her showing in Georgia primary
By Ron Kampeas, The Times of Israel
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republic primary candidate in Georgia, in a campaign ad. (Screen capture: YouTube)
WASHINGTON (JTA) — US President Donald Trump boosted a Georgia Republican candidate who refuses to disavow a white supremacist she posed with in a photograph and has seemingly promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
“A big winner,” Trump wrote in a tweet Friday attached to a story on a pro-Trump website noting Marjorie Taylor Greene performed well in the primary for the heavily Republican 14th District, despite having an ad banned by Facebook. “Congratulations!”
Greene, the owner of a construction company, was the leader in Tuesday’s primary but did not secure 50 percent of the vote and is now headed to a runoff against her closest rival, Dr. John Cowan, a neurosurgeon.
Greene has posed in photos with Chester Doles, a Georgia man who once was a leader of the Ku Klux Klan and served a prison sentence for nearly beating to death a black man he saw in the company of a white woman. She has dismissed media queries about the photos as “silly” and “fake news.”
Greene has peddled conspiracy theories about QAnon, a complex fantasy about a group of influential pedophiles trying to bring down Trump that at times has veered into anti-Semitism. Jewish Insider uncovered a 2018 posting on a QAnon website signed by a Marjorie Greene that brought in anti-Semitic tropes accusing Jewish billionaire George Soros and the Rothschild family of being involved in the conspiracy.
The Republican Jewish Coalition told Jewish Insider this week that it would not support Greene if she won the runoff, but would not oppose her either.
In the banned Facebook ad, Greene cocks an automatic rifle and warns Antifa, a group that organizes counterprotests against the far-right and has become fodder for conspiracy theories peddled by Trump, not to come to her district.