Prominent journalist and former BBC news anchor Emily Maitis was told by US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene to “F*** off” after being asked about a conspiracy she once touted about “Jewish space lasers”.

Maitlis, who is Jewish, was at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago headquarters for Super Tuesday and had asked Greene about a 2018 online post of hers in which she attributed a company she described as “Rothschild Inc” of being behind California’s wildfires.

The post, which preceded Greene’s election to Congress in 2020, became notoriously known as Greene ranting about “Jewish space lasers”.

The incident took place after Maitlis had asked Greene about Trump’s presidential rival Nikki Haley, his list of VP candidates and whether Greene herself is on it, before moving her line of questioning to the former president’s supporters.

Maitlis said: “Can you tell me why so many people that support Donald Trump love conspiracy theories, including yourself? He seems to attract a lot of conspiracy theorists.”

Greene responded by accusing Maitlis of being a conspiracy theorist and “the left” of spreading conspiracy theories.

She said: “We like the truth. We like supporting our Constitution, our freedoms and America First.”

Maitlis asked, “What about Jewish space lasers?” to which Greene replied: “Why don’t you go talk about Jewish space lasers and really why don’t you f*** off? How about that?”

Greene, who was a conservative activist and worked as a gym owner in 2018, wrote in a Facebook post about California’s wildfires that raged at the time: “Oddly there are all these people who have said they saw what looked like lasers or blue beams of light causing the fires, and pictures and videos.

“I don’t know anything about that, but I do find it really curious PG&E’s partnership with Solaren on space solar generators...[which] collect the suns [sic] energy and then beam it back to Earth to a transmitter to convert to electricity…

“I mean mistakes are never made when anything new is invented. What would that look like anyway? A laser beam or light beam coming down to Earth I guess. Could that cause a fire?... that wouldn’t look so good for PG&E, Rothschild Inc, Solaren or Jerry Brown.”