Republican convention speaker out of lineup after retweeting anti-Semitic rant
A speaker for the Republican National Convention retweeted an anti-Semitic screed on Tuesday morning, the same day she was slated to take the stage to praise President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies.
A person familiar with the matter confirmed to POLITICO on Tuesday evening that the speaker, Mary Ann Mendoza, was no longer appearing at the RNC.
Mendoza, who was to talk about her police officer son who was killed in a car crash, shared the Twitter messages, writing, “Do yourself a favor and read this thread.” The thread includes nearly every anti-Semitic trope of the last century to portray a Jewish cabal set on taking over American government. It includes a link to “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” an infamous fabrication from Tsarist Russia that was popular in Nazi Germany. The Daily Beast first reported on Mendoza’s tweet.
An hour before the televised portion of the convention was to begin, the tweet disappeared from Mendoza’s Twitter account. She later wrote on Twitter that she retweeted the thread without reading "every post within the thread."
"My apologies for not paying attention to the intent of the whole message," she wrote. "That does not reflect my feelings or personal thoughts whatsoever."
The thread was filled the images, and anti-Semitic references were immediately apparent from the first few tweets.
Mendoza was selected to talk about immigration as a so-called “angel parent” — the highly controversial label given to people whose children were killed by undocumented immigrants. Her son was reportedly killed in a car crash involving an undocumented immigrant who was driving under the influence of alcohol.
“President Donald Trump is the FIRST political leader we’ve ever seen take on the radical Left to finally secure our border and to end illegal immigration since day one,” she was prepared to say, according to pre-released remarks from the convention’s organizers. “I’ve met him many times, and I know what’s in his heart. I know what he hopes and dreams for this country.”
In response to a request for comment, the Trump campaign also confirmed that Mendoza would not be appearing at the convention.
A handful of speakers at the convention have been recently exposed for making racist comments. Vice reported earlier Tuesday that an anti-abortion activist, Abby Johnson, had said recently that it would be “smart” for police to racially profile her son, saying that, “statistically, my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons.”
Johnson also drew parallels between abortion and the Holocaust in a pair of 2017 tweets, where she said "Both occurred because of the systemic dehumanization of an entire group of people."
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican House nominee and avid QAnon conspiracy theorist, announced Tuesday that she had been invited to attend Trump’s nomination acceptance speech at the White House on Thursday. Trump congratulated Greene shortly after her primary win in Georgia and called her a “future Republican star.”
QAnon has been labeled a potential domestic terrorist threat by the FBI, and a number of prominent Republicans denounced the theory as evil. It claims Trump and an anonymous government agent are working against a deep-state cabal of pedophiles in Washington.
Alex Isenstadt contributed reporting.
