Former US President Donald Trump, who wants to run again for the Republicans in the 2024 presidential election, has been criticized from within his party for hosting racist Nick Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for a leader who wants to set an example for the country or the party to meet with a self-confessed racist or anti-Semite,” Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Sunday the broadcaster CNN. Influential Republican House Representative James Comer, in turn, told NBC that Trump needs better judgment about who he is having dinner with.
The US Department of Justice describes Fuentes as someone who considers whites to be superior to other people (English: “supremacist”). He had attended the January 6, 2021 rally of Trump supporters that preceded the storming of the Capitol. The civil rights group Anti-Defamation League Fuentes also stated that he ridiculed the Holocaust.
Trump says he didn’t know Nick Fuentes
Trump explained on his social platform Truth Social that he met Fuentes at a reception last week that was also attended by rapper Ye, known by his former name Kanye West. Ye has also been criticized for anti-Semitic statements. Trump stated that he got along well with Ye. He said he was not anti-Semitic and said “nice things” about him on TV host and political commentator Tucker Carlson’s TV show. “Why would I not agree to a meeting? Also, I didn’t know Nick Fuentes,” Trump wrote.
Former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman tweeted: “To my friend Donald Trump, you are better than that. Also meeting an anti-Semite like Kanye West and human scum like Nick Fuentes is unacceptable.”