Marjorie Taylor Greene continues to spread her latest bizarre conspiracy theory
As the death toll from Hurricane Helene continues to climb amid the destruction it left in its path and the angst of another powerful storm on its path to hit Florida, MAGA conservative Marjorie Taylor Greene is digging in with her latest conspiracy.
“Ask your government if the weather is manipulated or controlled,” Greene, who is an elected member of Congress, told her 3.7 million followers on X. “Climate change is the new Covid.”
Greene — who, among other conspiracy theories, suggested years ago that Jewish space lasers were to blame for California wildfires — isn’t budging since she tweeted last week: “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”
Helene is the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005. Roughly half the victims were in North Carolina, while dozens more were killed in South Carolina and Georgia — which Greene represents.
How many people are missing or unaccounted for isn’t clear. The death toll climbed to at least 230 people in recent days as more victims were found.
Hurricane Milton, meanwhile, could come ashore Wednesday across Florida’s storm-battered Gulf Coast as a Category 5 storm. It’s currently on track to hit the Tampa Bay region, which has not endured a direct hit by a major hurricane in more than a century. Scientists expect the system to weaken slightly before landfall, though it could retain hurricane strength as it churns across central Florida toward the Atlantic Ocean.
As evacuation orders were issued, forecasters warned of a possible 8- to 12-foot (2.4- to 3.6-meter) storm surge in Tampa Bay. That’s the highest ever predicted for the region and nearly double the levels reached two weeks ago during Helene, said National Hurricane Center spokesperson Maria Torres.
In 2018, a poorly maintained electrical grid sparked a California wildfire that killed 84 people. In a Facebook post in November of that year, Greene falsely speculated that darker forces were at work.
Connecting a series of scattershot points, Greene suggested a bank controlled by the Rothschild family, who are Jewish, a utility company responsible for the fire and then-Gov. Jerry Brown had a compelling motive to spark the blaze: clearing the path for a high speed rail project Brown wanted. She also floated the possibility that the fires could have been started by “lasers or blue beams of light” shot down from space by allies of Brown who were said to be in the solar energy industry.
The post coined the phrase “Jewish space lasers.”
More recently, she said in April after a 4.8 magnitude earthquakehit New Jersey and reverberated through the northeast, around the same time of a solar eclipse, that they were signs “God is sending America signs to tell us to repent.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.
