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.”

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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

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