“The top two Republicans in the U.S. Congress broke their silence on Tuesday about former President Donald Trump's dinner last week with white supremacist Nick Fuentes, saying the Republican Party has no place for antisemitism or white supremacy…
“Trump has said the encounter at his Mar-A-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, was inadvertent… Fuentes attended the dinner with Ye, the musician formerly known as Kanye West, who has also drawn widespread criticism for antisemitic comments.” Reuters
Here’s our prior coverage of Kanye West. The Flip Side
The right condemns the dinner and argues it may be time for the GOP to move on from Trump.
“It was fairly obvious that Trump did not know who Fuentes was when he had dinner with him. Since most of his team was spending time with their families for Thanksgiving, it appears there was nobody there to warn against meeting with Fuentes. Yet, after the event, the former president has not bothered to fully distance himself from Fuentes despite reportedly being urged to by his team of advisors…
“This is not the first time Trump has flubbed when confronted with a racial issue. I have heard previously that he is hesitant on these matters because he thinks it will push members of his base away. But this is far from the truth. Most people on the right do not subscribe to Fuentes’ views and view him as the POS that he is. The percentage of those who would turn on Trump for disavowing him is minuscule compared to those who wouldn’t – the former president has nothing to be afraid of in this regard. But if he is serious about being the president once again, these types of unforced errors are not going to help him.”
Jeff Charles, RedState
“Some have speculated that Trump was essentially set up, that Ye brought along Fuentes to embarrass him. And while that may be true, you also don’t just stroll into Mar-a-Lago and get a table like it’s a Friendly’s. Trump is a former president with Secret Service protection; even if he didn’t know who Fuentes was, surely some of those who helped arrange the dinner did…
“Maybe after the Fuentes flap it’s past time for a stark reappraisal of this partnership. What has Trump done for us lately? He won the 2016 election, true, and had substantive successes in the White House. But then there’s little question he was a drag in the 2022 elections, weighing down candidates he endorsed by an average of five points, according to Nate Cohn. Why should conservatives accept those kinds of losses? And why should they allow the damage to their brand that’s been done because he went and supped with zygote-Himmler?”
Matt Purple, Spectator World
“There is a very real and important negative consequence of Trump’s stunning lack of judgment in trusting Milo and Kanye. Fuentes’s vile brand of hatred has been given enormous oxygen: for days, liberals and anti-Trump conservatives have been sharing his videos, generating hundreds of thousands of views, in order to show what a horrible person Trump dined with…
“And you can’t really blame them: it’s a catch-22. The former and possible future president dining with a Holocaust denier is newsworthy, and there is no way to tell that story without benefitting Fuentes.”
David Marcus, Spectator World
The left condemns the dinner and argues that it is consistent with Trump’s prior behavior.
The left condemns the dinner and argues that it is consistent with Trump’s prior behavior.
"As a former president of the United States – and an announced candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination – it’s Trump’s responsibility to know who he’s meeting with! An audience with the former president is a VERY big deal and confers a certain statue and status. You have to know that if you are Trump or the people around him. So, good on McCarthy for calling out Fuentes and making clear that his views are abhorrent. But he doesn’t get a pass on somehow suggesting that Trump has already reckoned with the giant mistake of having dinner with Fuentes. Trump hasn’t. Period.”
Chris Cillizza, CNN
"Let’s put aside for a moment whether Trump knew Fuentes, an avid Trump supporter who once said, ‘All I want is revenge against my enemies and a total Aryan victory.’ Trump certainly knows West… West’s offensive statements weren’t a one-off controversy from decades past — they were literally made weeks ago. Some of his dangerous remarks, as documented by the Anti-Defamation League, included downplaying the Holocaust and perpetuating conspiracies about Jews controlling various industries and harming Black people…
“This is the same Trump who demonized Muslims during his 2016 campaign, from his call for a ‘complete shutdown’ of Muslims entering the United States to refusing to walk back his wholly unsupported claim about Middle Eastern people in New Jersey cheering the 9/11 attack… This Trump episode can rightfully be labeled many things, from normalizing antisemitism to emboldening White supremacy. But the overriding takeaway is that it is perfectly consistent with Trump’s brand.”
Dean Obeidallah, CNN
"The poor record of the most strongly Trump-affiliated candidates in the 2022 midterms and the concomitant presidential buzz around Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has made Trump as weak and isolated as he’s been since the Capitol riot…
“[But] absence of credentialed Republicans from Trump’s Florida resort and country club is not going to stop [Trump] from seeking attention and adulation wherever he may find it—and may not keep voters from supporting him. Who knows? It could persuade voters to support him! We won’t belabor the point here, but from a strategic perspective Trump may well be pleased that at this late date he can still create national news stories in which he is criticized by the ‘establishment.’ For him, being at the bottom of the barrel isn’t embarrassing—it’s where he’s always done some of his ‘best’ work.”
Ben Mathis-Lilley, Slate