Jake Tapper slams Marjorie Taylor Greene for ‘pretending to care’ about antisemitism

Georgia congresswoman uses false accusations of ‘insurrections’ to smear progressives calling for end to Gaza civilian deaths

CNN’s Jake Tapper ruthlessly tore into Republican conspiracist and congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene on his show this Sunday after Ms Greene somewhat predictably used the Israel-Gaza conflict as her latest cudgel against Democrats on Twitter.

After Ms Greene falsely accused pro-Palestinian protesters in Union Station of committing an “insurrection”, Tapper responded on his show and accused Ms Greene of using the deaths of thousands of civilians, including children, as a political football. Thousands of protesters, including many Jewish New Yorkers, gathered at the station to protest the US’s ongoing refusal to call for a ceasefire as civilian deaths in the Israel-Gaza conflict climb.

“Antisemitism is not a cudgel to be used against people for political points, nor is Islamophobia or racism or anti-gay behaviour or misogyny or any other kind of bigotry,” Tapper said on Sunday. “Just over three weeks ago, 1,400 people, mostly Jews, mostly civilians, were slaughtered here in some of the cruelest and most unimaginable ways in the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.”

“This s*** is not a game,” the CNN host concluded.

The Georgia congresswoman’s choice of word to describe the protest — an “insurrection” — is hardly an accident.

Ms Greene and other January 6 apologists have long sought to apply the label to any protest, large or small, attended by Democrats or progressives in the wake of the attack on the US Capitol carried out by Donald Trump’s supporters. The definition of the word, which actually refers to an attempt to overthrow the government, has been utterly lost and run into the dirt along the way.

She and her Republican allies have long minimised the severity and danger posed by the attack on the Capitol, while simultaneously spreading falsehoods about various Democratic-aligned protest groups, such as Black Lives Matter. The intent appears to be to rewrite the history of January 6 while at the same time painting her political enemies with the same brush that Republicans who supported the illegal interference in the election were painted with after the 2020 election.

Ms Greene was removed from her committee assignments and nearly censured under the previous Congress after videos of her harrassing staffers of a congresswoman and haranguing a teenage school shooting survivor were uncovered, as were comments on Facebook she had “liked” endorsing violent attacks against Democrats.