McConnell, Schumer blast Greene remarks on Holocaust

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday condemned comments from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) comparing a mask requirement to the Holocaust.

“This morning Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican congresswoman from Georgia, once again compared preparations taken against COVID to the Holocaust. These are sickening, reprehensible comments, and she should stop this vile language immediately,” Schumer, who is the first Jewish Senate majority leader, said from the floor. 

McConnell told CNN that her comments are “outrageous” and “reprehensible.” 

GOP begins to call out Marjorie Taylor Greene, with McConnell telling @tedbarrettcnn and @FoxReports that her Holocaust comments are “outrageous” and “reprehensible”

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) May 25, 2021

Greene, a frequent source of controversy for her party, sparked widespread backlash late last week when she compared Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) requirement that members wear masks on the floor to the Holocaust, where millions of Jews were murdered. 

“You know, we can look back at a time in history when people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany. And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about,” Greene said.

She defended those comments on Tuesday, reviving focus on her remarks, when she claimed in a tweet that she had only compared mask mandates to “discrimination against Jews in early Nazi years.” 

The remarks from the two Senate leaders came as the top two House Republicans pushed back on Greene on Tuesday. 

“Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling. The Holocaust is the greatest atrocity committed in history. The fact that this needs to be stated today is deeply troubling,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in a statement.

Lauren Fine — a spokeswoman for House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), McCarthy’s No. 2 — said he “does not agree with these comments and condemns these comparisons to the Holocaust.”