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Former President Donald Trump’s refusal to apologize or repudiate the openly anti-Semitic he dined with last week puts him at odds with his own party leaders, offering the first test of his political resilience since launching his third race for the White House.
The altercation also tests how Republicans will deal with their excessive strip in the coming months after years of racist, misogynist and anti-Semitic rhetoric flooding political blood in the Trump era.
Trump stunned through the backlash and argued that controversy over his Mar-a-Lago dinner with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and rapper Kayne West, now named Ye, who introduced anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, would explode, according to aides who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations. “I think it’s dying out,” they recalled, Trump saying.
But the wave of denunciations only intensified when lawmakers returned to Washington after the Thanksgiving holiday this week, breaking a well-known trend of dodging or ignoring Trump’s controversies for much of his presidency, ushering in a new phase of more vocal complaints about him.
“We want to avoid whispered considerations and veiled statements, and we want to defend the principles and ideals upon which our country and our party were founded,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the first possible 2024 candidate to condemn Trump over dinner, said Wednesday. “There is no position for anti-Semitism or white supremacists in the Republican Party and no position to tell time to other people like Nick Fuentes. Donald Trump’s recent moves and poor judgment record make him untenable as a candidate. “for our party.
Rebukes followed from other challengers likely from 2024, adding an exceptionally rare complaint from Trump’s former vice president.
Others have been more cautious, with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denouncing anti-Semitism without naming Trump or his guests. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whom Trump sees as a top risk in a potential challenge in 2024, commented on the controversy; DeSantis has his own history of misunderstanding about right-wing extremism. His spokesmen responded to requests for comment.
The warnings against visitors at Trump’s dinner were based on widespread court cases among Republicans that the former president had damaged the party’s midterm functionality by discouraging its voters from voting early or by mail and by pressuring applicants to repeat their lies about the 2020 election that they defended themselves. moderate and independent. Instead of capitalizing on a red wave to triumphantly claim his 2024 candidacy, Trump announced his crusade with the momentum of just a handful of far-right Republicans and faced a varied and emboldened box of potential rivals for the presidential nomination.
The dinner, which took place just a week after Trump’s candidacy began, also highlighted the dangers of his post-presidential life and the lack of classic crusading infrastructure. Sources and other visitors who arrived with Ye were flagged through Mar-a-Lago security with identification appearing, other people familiar with the matter said, and Trump had no staff with him that night, unless it was his private aide, Walt Nauta.
A spokesman for Trump declined to comment.
Until the day of the dinner, several advisers tried to convince Trump to cancel it. Aides showed Trump some of Ye’s comments in an effort to dissuade him from dinner, aides said. Ye lost business contracts and was widely condemned for his explicitly anti-Semitic tweets and diatribes. .
But Trump, one adviser recalled, “didn’t care. ” The former president focused on Ye’s story praising him and saying, “He’s been a great guy to me. “Ye visited Trump at the White House in 2018 and regularly praised his presidency.
Fuentes, a commentator who attended the fatal white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, defended racist and anti-Semitic views, endorsed segregation, attacked immigrants and was kind to the Holocaust.
Several aides said Trump is now angry with Ye for bringing in Fuentes, but said Trump did not aim to attack Ye publicly.
Trump has also resisted efforts in recent days to convince him to denounce Fuentes and Ye. His most recent comments on the controversy, published Tuesday on Fox News’ website, underscored his earlier claim that he didn’t know who Fuentes was. I’ve never heard of this man,” Trump said. “I had no idea what their criticisms were, and they weren’t expressed at the table very quickly, otherwise they wouldn’t have been accepted. “
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. , said she spoke with Trump and his team after dinner and told reporters that the former president repeated to her that he had “no idea who Nick Fuentes was. “From dinner, Greene said they were modifying their protocols to make sure other people no longer approached Trump.
“All former presidents have this in place,” he said. If you don’t know who someone is and you don’t know what they are, you don’t know that they are possibly a bad user among you. “
Trump called David Friedman, his former ambassador to Israel, to express his displeasure with Friedman’s tweet criticizing it, aides said. Friedman did not respond to comment on the messages.
Some aides said they feared Trump’s remarks could spark a more heated controversy. His advisers were inundated with tweets from more sensible Jewish and Republican allies begging Trump to condemn Fuentes.
“President Trump deserves to condemn Kanye West and Nick Fuentes’ hatred of Jews, anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial,” said Morton A. Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America, who revered Trump with a rare award on Nov. 2. Thirteen detecting the Israeli policies of his administration. “Even if I didn’t know who Nick Fuentes was, you can say it’s true, however, now that you know, you deserve to say something. “
Part of the goal of denouncing Fuentes, two aides said, would be to prevent Republicans from complaining about him. “One of his big upheavals is that he doesn’t like to criticize other people who help him,” one adviser said. Help him, he may not need to attack you. “
However, other Republicans now appear willing to attack Trump at a point not noticed since before he was the party’s nominee in 2016. The floodgates opened Monday as at least 8 Republican senators joined in criticizing the dinner. Its leader, Mitch McConnell, weighed in Tuesday, saying, “Anyone who meets other people who hold that opinion, in my opinion, has very little chance of being elected president of the United States. “Trump responded to McConnell by calling him a “loser” in the Fox News interview. .
Also Tuesday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. , told reporters he believes no one “should spend time with Nick Fuentes” and that he “has no position in the Republican Party. “McCarthy said, “Well, I condemn his ideology. It has no position in society. Not at all. “
Most Republicans have kept the attention and Fuentes’ complaint harsher than directing their anger at Trump. But moderate Republicans were quick to publicly condemn Trump over dinner.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa. , also criticized the “lack of judgment,” went further and emphasized that it “deserves an unequivocal apology. “
“Fuentes is an evil human being who has no seat at any table, let alone a former American president’s table,” he said.
House Republicans more frequently sidestepped reporters’ questions about the dinner, with some completely ignoring repeated attempts to respond. very bad” in the ranks. Several noted that the last thing each and every Republican must communicate is the 2024 election, not to mention that the party leader is dining with white nationalists and anti-Semites.
But Trump’s staunchest allies in the House are coming to his defense, echoing his reaction that he had no idea who Fuentes was. Most stood up to Ye, whose anti-Semitic tirades in recent months have been well publicized.
“Listen, the president has no ill will in his heart. He’s a very, very big man,” Rep. Clay Higgins, R-Los Angeles, said Tuesday. “I don’t think the president is being found guilty by a guy who didn’t realize who showed up for a casual dinner. “
The backlash from Republican lawmakers contrasted with the unusual practice under President Trump of avoiding questions about Trump’s latest outrages or pretending not to have noticed his tweets. The Charlottesville protest, which Trump said included “very smart people, on both sides. “in consideration of the waiver.
The build-up to the Charlottesville march, organized as a Unite the Right rally, marked a high point for cooperation within the right, long fractured by infighting over ideological rather than public differences, according to Megan Squire, an extremism researcher at the Southern Center for Poverty Law. At the time, he said, right-wing extremists were galvanized and emboldened through Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign, former White House adviser Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News and the “alt-right” online community.
After a neo-Nazi killed a young counter-protester in Charlottesville, the coalition split again, as leaders of other teams traded blame and fought prosecutions. violence, Squire said, adding that Fuentes and Proud Boys President Henry “Enrique” Tarrio said.
Fuentes has developed an online audience with live broadcasts, raising a budget that totaled more than $100,000 in the 10 months to January 2021, according to Squire’s analysis. During that month, Fuentes was banned from major online platforms for his involvement in the pro-Trump crowd. from the gates of the Capitol on January 6. Fuentes has created its own site to broadcast its exhibits and raise funds, making it difficult for researchers to follow and also reducing its reach.
Fringe figures like Fuentes seek to gain visibility and legitimacy by reaching out to politicians. Fuentes arranged meetings with interventions from far-right Republicans Greene and Paul A. Gosar of Arizona, prompting complaints from party leaders. Gosar presented his 2021 appearance at the Fuentes convention as a misunderstanding, but returned in 2022. Greene supported their participation at the time.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Greene said he was there knowing he could reach out to the students. After the uproar over his presence, Greene recalled asking his staff to shoot videos of Fuentes to perceive who he was and “maybe it wasn’t what he was saying. “. “
“I don’t need to have anything to do with him,” he said Tuesday after reiterating that Fuentes has no position in the Republican Party. “I don’t regret talking to the little kids who were there because I don’t understand why they’re hitting him. “. But I worry about young people who would stick to him and it’s a shame because I think we all are.
While Trump’s dinner is a peak success gimmick for Fuentes, it appears to have produced a massive announcement, but only modest increases in subscribers and revenue, according to SPLC’s Squire.
“They go through those fluctuations when they’re relevant, then irrelevant and then re-dominate relevance,” Squire said. “They have nothing else to do, so that’s the only game. “
Milo Yiannopoulos, a far-right provocateur who first rose to fame thanks to Breitbart, is another key figure at the Trump-Fuentes dinner who has gone through cycles of relevance. Yiannopoulos left the venue and was expelled from the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2017 after the publication of video clips in which he gave the impression of protecting relationships with underage boys.
But Yiannopoulos resurfaced earlier this year as a Capitol intern with Greene. When asked about his hiring, Greene said she spoke to him “occasionally” since he lived in his community, but was unaware of his own anti-Semitic comments.
Ye announced his own plans to run for president in November and chose Yiannopoulos as his crusade manager. parents of young people killed in the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Yiannopoulos then took Ye to Fuentes.
Yiannopoulos has since claimed credit for adding Fuentes to Ye’s dinner with Trump as a way to hurt the former president, telling NBC News he did it “just to make life miserable for Trump. “Yiannopoulos responded to a request for comment.
Fuentes, in a post on the social network of choice Telegram, objected to Yiannopoulos’ claims. “My goal is not to harm Trump by attending the dinner, this is fake news,” he wrote. “I love Donald Trump. “
Paul Kane and Camila DeChaulus of The Washington Post contributed to the report.
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