GOP Rep. Louie Gohmert just said some very questionable things about George Soros

(Image credit: Screenshot/Twitter/Justin Baragona)

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) thinks we're living in a dystopian novel — and that's not the only wild idea swimming through his brain.

On Thursday, the congressman appeared on Fox Business' Varney and Co. to discuss the rapidly plummeting stock market. Google's parent company Alphabet was among the businesses that saw diminishing shares in the past few days, and Gohmert suggested that was because "Google has repeatedly sold their souls" and invaded user privacy. He then compared that to the surveillance state George Orwell envisioned in his novel 1984.

Discussing Orwell soon reminded Gohmert of "another George," he said. Just like how Google was "born in a free country" but shifted to "oppress others," the Hungarian-born liberal philanthropist George Soros is "supposed to be Jewish" but went on to "damage" Israel, Gohmert alleged. Without any form of proof, Gohmert then claimed that Soros, who received a suspected pipe bomb in the mail in October and is frequently the target of anti-Semitic smears, "turned on fellow Jews and helped take the property that they own."

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Gohmert drifted away from his Soros rant as quickly as he arrived at it, and host Stuart Varney didn't question his very unfounded claims. Later, Varney addressed the "unsubstantiated and false allegations" Gohmert had raised, assuring viewers "those views are not shared by me, this program, or anyone at Fox Business." Watch the moment below. Kathryn Krawczyk

Update 3:09 p.m. EST: This article was updated to reflect Varney's later statement regarding Gohmert's appearance.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.