Republicans pull speaker from RNC after she shared antisemitic conspiracy
Mary Ann Mendoza apologises for linking to lengthy post as GOP event removes her from lineup at last minute
The Republican National Convention has pulled Mary Ann Mendoza from Tuesday's prime-time lineup after she posted then deleted a Twitter thread promoting antisemitism.
An "Angel Mom" – a mother whose child was killed by an undocumented migrant – and advisory board member on Donald Trump's campaign, Ms Mendoza told her followers to read a lengthy series of posts outlining paranoid, antisemitic beliefs claiming that the Rothschild family established a plot for world domination.
It also included links to QAnon posts and "The Protocols of the Elder of Zion", a notorious antisemitic booklet used as Nazi rationalisation for genocide.
She deleted her post moments after the publication of a story about her post in The Daily Beast.
"I retweeted a very long thread earlier without reading every post within the thread," she said. "My apologies for not paying attention to the intent of the whole message. That does not reflect my feelings or personal thoughts whatsoever."
She had requested the Thread Reader app account, a "bot" that "unrolls" connected Twitter threads into a single document upon request, to "unroll" the conspiracy posts.
Her Twitter post with that request was also deleted. The Thread Reader app "unrolled" the thread following her request before 7am on Tuesday. It was removed 12 hours later.
The FBI has labelled QAnon a domestic extremist organisation tied to threats and violence, as well as to racist and antisemitic tropes. Twitter and Facebook have purged dozens of pages, groups and accounts that promote the conspiracy.
Ms Mendoza, whose son was killed in a car collusion with a person living in the country without legal permission, was expected to address the GOP convention to discuss immigration and "sanctuary" policies.
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