Louie Gohmert

Fox Business apologized Thursday following Rep. Louie Gohmert’s comments about Jewish billionaire George Soros during a segment about Google and China, The Daily Beast reported.

The Texas congressman did the opposite and doubled down.

“You mention Orwell, it also reminds me of another George—George Soros,” Gohmert said, following a discussion on China and the idea of a “Big Brother” government, from George Orwell’s novel, “1984.” “Because Google is born in a free country and then they go over and help oppress another country.”

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

He continued: “George Soros is supposed to be Jewish, but you wouldn’t know it from the damage he’s inflicted on Israel and the fact that he turned on fellow Jews and helped take the property that they own.”

Host Stuart Varney didn’t address it before directing the conversation away back to a more relevant topic. He apologized during the next broadcast hour.

“Congressman Louie Gohmert for some reason went out of his way to bring up George Soros and made unsubstantiated and false allegations against him. I want to make clear those views are not shared by me, this program or anyone at Fox Business.”

Gohmert wrote in a statement to The Daily Beast that his comments were accurate.

“Soros himself admitted in a 60 Minutes interview with Steve Kroft on December 20, 1998 that he had no regrets whatsoever about assisting the Nazis in confiscating property from the Jewish people during the Holocaust. That is a fact,” he said. “Any person with any sense of empathy for their fellow human beings would regret the part they played in confiscating Jewish property during the Holocaust.”

This is one of the debunked conspiracy theories that made Soros, a liberal philanthropist and financier, a boogeyman to the far-right. He has long been the face of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, including being accused of funding the recent midterm elections.

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount