Marjorie Taylor Greene blames unabashed ignorance for her Jewish space lasers post
Donald Trump Jr. told the congresswoman her theory that solar panel satellites caused California wildfires was ‘not unreasonable’

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) at a Donald Trump rally on Sept. 17, 2022. Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images
Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t think Jews have space lasers. In fact, she says, she didn’t know that centuries-old antisemitic conspiracy theories were actually about Jews.
That’s the new defense the QAnon conspiracy theorist-turned-congresswoman rolled out on Thursday’s episode of Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast Triggered with Don Jr.
While discussing the purported antisemitism of Democrat Ilhan Omar, the pair pivoted toward Greene’s new talking point when referring to a 2018 Facebook post in which she postulated that space-based energy-collecting satellites may have caused devastating California wildfires. In the post, Greene named several people she believed may have been behind the devious plot, including members of the Rothschild family, prompting many to mock her “Jewish space lasers” theory. Even her fellow right-wing conspiracy-believing congresswoman, Lauren Boebert, zinged her with a Jewish space laser joke.
The backlash against Greene led to many condemning her antisemitism. Democrats voted to remove her from her committee assignments for her support of conspiracy theories around the 2020 election.
But Greene, a Republican from Georgia, told the ex-president’s son that she “had no clue” what Jewish space lasers were.
Greene accurately pointed out she never used those actual words. Trump said he believed she was merely speculating that an experimental technology that was in no way connected to the wildfires had caused a tragedy that, once again, was completely unrelated.
In other words, a conspiracy theory.
“The names I mentioned, I didn’t know anything about the people,” said Green. “I didn’t know anything about their religion or anything about that.”
Greene did not explain how she concluded the wildfires were the result of a scheme to literally incinerate vast swaths of California forest given that she didn’t know anything about any of the people she thought were involved.
But Trump said Greene’s interpretation was “not an unreasonable question.”
Unapologetic ignorance is a defense that Greene has rolled out before. In 2021, she told a Brooklyn Orthodox Jewish group that she hadn’t even known that the Rothschilds, one of the most famous Jewish families in history, were Jewish. In recent months Greene has said that her past acceptance of the antisemitic QAnon conspiracy theory was not her fault, but rather that of “the internet.”
As of Friday morning, the podcast was solely available via video format on Rumble, a right-wing alternative to YouTube that is best- known for being home to an accused human trafficker.
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.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 2
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
- 3
Culture Did this Jewish literary titan have the right idea about Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling after all?
- 4
Opinion I first met Netanyahu in 1988. Here’s how he became the most destructive leader in Israel’s history.
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
-
Opinion Gaza and Trump have left the Jewish community at war with itself — and me with a bad case of alienation
-
Fast Forward Trump administration restores student visas, but impact on pro-Palestinian protesters is unclear
-
Fast Forward Deborah Lipstadt says Trump’s campus antisemitism crackdown has ‘gone way too far’
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.