Fox Business host Stuart Varney moved to distance himself and his network from Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert, who attacked billionaire and Democratic donor George Soros on-air Thursday.
“In the last hour one of our guests, Congressman Louie Gohmert, for some reason went out of his way to bring up George Soros and made unsubstantiated and false allegations against him,” Varney said after the segment concluded. “I want to make clear those views are not shared by me, this program or anyone at Fox Business.”
In the segment, Gohmert suggested that Soros was not living up to his Jewish faith because of his frequent criticism of Israel.
“George Soros is supposed to be Jewish, but you wouldn’t know it from the damage he’s inflicted on Israel and the fact that he turned on fellow Jews and helped take the property that they own,” Gohmert said.
The moment went unchallenged by Varney at the time, and Gohmert moved on to talk about Google.
The line from Gohmert about Soros seizing Jewish property refers to an old conspiracy theory that the Hungarian-born billionaire had collaborated with the Nazis — something which the fact-checking website Snopes has fully debunked.
“In no sense was Soros, who turned 14 years old not long after the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944, a ‘Nazi collaborator’” they wrote. “At no time did he confiscate (or help confiscate) the property of Jews, ‘identify Jews to the Nazis,’ or help ’round up’ people targeted for deportation or extermination by the Germans.”