McConnell blasts Reps. Gosar and Greene for speaking to white nationalist group

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made a statement to reporters Monday condemning Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) for appearing alongside white nationalist Nick Fuentes, Politico reports.

"There's no place in the Republican Party for white supremacists or anti-Semitism," McConnell said.

Greene and Gosar spoke at the America First Political Action Conference in Orlando, an event organized by Fuentes, over the weekend. It was Greene's first time at the event. Gosar returned after delivering the keynote last year.

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During an address to the crowd, Fuentes called for a "round of applause for Russia," amid its invasion of Ukraine. The crowd responded with a brief chant of "Putin! Putin!"

On his streaming show, America First, Fuentes has used the N-word and said he believes only 200,000 to 300,000 Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

McConnell was not the only Republican to criticize Greene and Gosar for appearing at the event. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) described the two as "morons" who are "certainly missing a few IQ points." House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called their participation "appalling and wrong" and "unacceptable."

Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), both of whom were censured by the RNC for serving on the Jan. 6 committee, also spoke out. Cheney posted a tweet calling Greene and Gosar "the Putin wing of the GOP," while Kinzinger complained that while "Liz and I can get censured, they're going to get help up as the future leaders of the party."

Gosar was censured and stripped of his committee assignments by the House in November after he posted an edited anime video that depicted him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and depicted immigrants as flesh-eating monsters. Greene was stripped of her committee assignments in Feb. 2021 for suggesting (among other things) that school shootings were false flag operations.