Donald Trump has faced a firestorm of criticism since Tuesday after dining with disgraced musical artist Kanye West and white supremacist Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump has frequently appeared with West, who legally changed his name to Ye. However, Trump has stated that he did not know Fuentes and was unaware that he would be present at the dinner. Fuentes promotes antisemitism and white supremacy on his podcast.
Karen Giorno, who worked as Trump’s 2016 campaign state director in Florida, was also present at the dinner and confirmed Fuentes’ presence.
“Kanye West very much wanted to visit Mar-a-Lago. Our dinner meeting was intended to be Kanye and me only, but he arrived with a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about,” Trump said.
Right Wing Watch, a project of the left-leaning group People for the American Way, posted a video of West and Fuentes walking through a Miami airport en route to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on Tuesday. Trump said the meeting was intended for him to provide West with “very much needed advice.”
“I told him he should definitely not run for President, ‘any voters you may have should vote for TRUMP,'” Trump wrote Friday on Truth Social.
“Anyway, we got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson. Why wouldn’t I agree to meet? I also, I didn’t know Nick Fuentes,” he concluded.
West ran for president in 2020 and announced his candidacy for 2024 in a video posted on Twitter. In the video, West said that he asked Trump to be his running mate. He said that Trump was “really impressed with Nick Fuentes.” He also said that Trump made derogatory remarks about his ex-wife Kim Kardashian.
West’s antisemitic remarks in October led to the termination of his large brand partnerships including Adidas and Balenciaga. He also asserted in the past that slavery was a “choice.”
Fuentes, 24, has been banned from several major social media platforms following white supremacist rhetoric. He was present at the far-right Charlottesville rally in 2017 and at the Jan. 6 Capitol Riots. He tweeted that the events on Jan. 6 were “awesome and I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t.”
He has forged ties with prominent far-right politicians including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., through his leadership within the white nationalist youth organization, America First. The group held several events supporting Trump following his 2020 election loss. Fuentes told his audience at a December 2020 “Stop the Steal” rally to, “storm every state capitol until Jan. 20, 2021, until President Trump is inaugurated for four more years.”
Fuentes was served a subpoena by the Jan. 6 House select committee in January of this year. Seven members of the America First group have been charged with federal crimes in connection with attacks on the Capitol.
According to a person briefed on the dinner meeting, Trump said he liked Fuentes, adding, “He gets me.”
Trump, who recently announced he will run for president in 2024, stated that he didn’t know Fuentes prior to the dinner and wasn’t aware of his arrival, which has stirred confusion as Fuentes was able to pass through security even in the midst of several federal investigations involving the Mar-a-Lago property.
The meeting has been denounced by several groups and politicians including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
“This is just another example of an awful lack of judgment from Donald Trump, which, combined with his past poor judgments, make him an untenable general election candidate for the Republican Party in 2024,” said Christie, who endorsed Trump in 2016 after suspending his own campaign.
David Friedman, Trump’s former appointee as ambassador to Israel, condemned the dinner on Twitter.
“To my friend Donald Trump, you are better than this,” said Friedman. “Even a social visit from an antisemite like Kanye West and human scum like Nick Fuentes is unacceptable. I urge you to throw those bums out, disavow them and relegate them to the dustbin of history where they belong.”
White House spokesman Andrew Bates also issued a statement. “Bigotry, hate, and antisemitism have absolutely no place in America – including at Mar-A-Lago. Holocaust denial is repugnant and dangerous, and it must be forcefully condemned,” the statement read.
Remarkable how Mar-a-Lago is supposedly so secure that there’s no issue with Trump storing classified docs — but so easy to access that Kanye West can walk in for dinner with Nick Fuentes
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) November 25, 2022
Top headline for the rest of the day should be one thing: 2024 presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump had dinner with a raving white supremacist neo-Nazi who openly calls for a dictatorship.
— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) November 25, 2022
