‘Horrific Silence’ from GOP Concerning Trump Meeting with Fuentes
Former president dined with controversial rapper and known white supremacist
Donald Trump — and the Republican Party — are drawing sharp criticism for Trump's decision last week to dine with two figures known for their racist and charged views.
Trump reportedly had dinner with the famous rapper once known as Kanye West — now known as “Ye” — and Nick Fuentes, a figure on the right who is a known white supremacist and Holocaust denier.
Ye, too, is known for his spate of anti-Semitic and racist statements.
Trump hosted the rapper and Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach Fla.
West, who has legally changed his name to Ye, posted a video Thursday on Twitter in which he claimed that Trump “is really impressed with Fuentes,” who has repeatedly made antisemitic and racist comments as chronicled by the Anti-Defamation League.
Fuentes, West said in the Twitter video, “is actually a loyalist” to Trump, unlike others who he said abandoned the former president after the 2020 election.
Since criticism of Trump for meeting for meeting with known racists mounted, the former president attempted a number of statements in defense which don't hold water. And the wider Republican Party is taking a beating for not denouncing the event — and Ye and Fuentes, in particular — with more energy.
Trump has tried to claim that he didn't know who Fuentes was, but political activist and political commentator the Rev Al Sharpton doesn't think that's honest.
“Donald Trump is a former president. He still has Secret Service. The Secret Service screens who visits the former president. When I've been around Barack Obama since he left the White House, you have to say who you're bringing,” Sharpton, who is Black, said in an on-camera TV appearance. “Are you saying that this man is running for president again and doesn't screen who he allows the come to the dinner table? That is against all protocol for Secret Service. If nothing other than security, they know who’s coming.
“He knew who he was meeting with. He knew the background. And now he is trying to, in many ways, do the Michael Jackson moonwalk when it does not apply. He has Secret Service. So they're saying Secret Service did not have a list of who was coming to dinner? I don't believe that,” Sharpton added.
Rep Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), a senior member of Congress, is even more disappointed with how other Republicans have reacted.
“What I make of it is that those of us who are committed to anti-hate need to a truly ignore Donald Trump and focus on our message of embracing diversity and standing as adults. I sent out a text or a tweet, primarily to call upon my Republican friends, because there was deafening silence,” the congresswoman, also Black, said. “There's obviously a purposeful reason that this meeting took place. I’ve decided that Donald Trump is not worth our time or our energy. I do believe hateful comments that can generate hate, actions, death toward people who don’t deserve the loss of life, obviously no one deserves that, are worthy of me speaking out against.
“And that’s who I’m speaking for and I’m wondering why Republicans have been deadly silent on this horrific meeting of 24-year-old who at that age is espousing anti-Semitic, hateful comments against just about everybody. I don’t think he likes anyone,” Jackson Lee added. “And to have that meeting by someone who has held the office of president of the United States is and should draw an outcry, not from Democrats who have values that we have espoused of — how should I say, wonderment of diversity, but it should be for those who seemingly have run to the corners and cannot be heard. How loudly can I get? How loud can my clarion call be to say, ‘Where are you? Can you stand up against this kind of absolute sinful behavior, if I might?’”
CNN host Dana Bash said, in a separate appearance, that Trump's meeting with Ye and Fuentes just doesn't make much political sense at a time when he has already announced as a candidate for president in 2024.
“You know what probably isn’t a great way to get voters on your side? Dine at your private club with white supremacists and Holocaust deniers. That is exactly what happened last week,” Bash said. “Former President Trump had white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, rapper Kanye West who is now known as Ye. The former president claimed that Fuentes was an unexpected guest and he knows nothing about him.”
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