An "Angel Mom" was scratched from the Republican National Convention program Tuesday night after she shared a thread promoting an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
Mary Ann Mendoza was scheduled to tell the story of her police officer son being killed by a drunken driver who was in the country illegally.
But hours before the prerecorded speech was to air, Mendoza, a member of the Trump campaign advisory board, retweeted a QAnon conspiracy theorist claiming Jewish people are trying to take over the world.
"Do yourself a favor and read this thread," Mendoza tweeted to her more than 40,000 followers Tuesday.
A Republican source familiar with the convention’s programming told the Daily Beast that Mendoza’s speech was nixed due to the uproar over her tweet.
After the Daily Beast published an article calling attention to the retweet, Mendoza reportedly deleted the post and apologized "for not paying attention to the intent of the whole message."
"That does not reflect my feelings or personal thoughts whatsoever," she tweeted, according to multiple reports.
As of Wednesday morning, all of Mendoza’s tweets had been protected, meaning they can only be viewed by approved followers.
In the past, Mendoza also has reportedly used Twitter to promote conspiracy theories that Democratic billionaire fundraiser George Soros, a Holocaust survivor, is a "Nazi" and that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert who has pushed for people to wear masks during the coronavirus pandemic, is paid by Soros, a favorite target of QAnon.
The Mendoza incident underscores the Trump campaign’s willingness to embrace and amplify the president’s fringe supporters. Among them is anti-abortion activist Abby Johnson, who spoke on Day 2 of the convention. In May, she advocated on Twitter for "household voting."
“In a Godly household, the husband would get the final say,” she wrote in a subsequent tweet.
Vice also found a video of Johnson saying that it would be "smart" for police to racially profile her biracial son because "statistically, my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons."
President Donald Trump also has praised Georgia congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is a QAnon conspiracy theorist who made a series of racist, Islamaphobic and anti-Semitic comments, as a “future Republican star.” The QAnon conspiracy theory believes that Trump is fighting a secret war against the "deep state" run by Satan-worshiping elites who control the world and run a child sex ring.
When asked about QAnon during a White House press briefing last week, Trump said: "I’ve heard these are people that love our country. So I don’t know really anything about it other than they do supposedly like me."
