Last week, former President Donald Trump invited two well-known far-right activists known for their anti-Semitic, racist and misogynistic views to dinner. These are Nick Fuentes, famous for denying the existence of the Jewish Holocaust, and rapper Kanye West, another anti-Jew and ex-husband of Kim Kardashian.
The dinner drew immediate rejection from Democrats after its contents became known. According to Trump’s entourage, there were talks about the supposed Jewish penetration into the American political system and about the need to get rid of President Biden, mainly after the last midterm elections, where the Republicans did not reach the positions they aspired to.
The problem, analyst Josh Gerber told CBS, was that the meeting “highlighted Trump’s need to prop up his possible presidential candidacy with the most extremist” in the United States.
But it wasn’t just Democrats who were outraged. Former Vice President Mike Pence, who grows further apart from the man he served for four years with each passing day, has also taken matters into his own hands.
“President Trump was wrong to give a seat at the table to a white nationalist, anti-Semite and Holocaust denier, and I think he should apologize for it. And he should unreservedly denounce those individuals and their hateful rhetoric,” Pence said. to NewsNation.
Trump “demonstrated profoundly poor judgment in giving these people a seat at his table,” he said, adding that he does not believe the former president is necessarily “a racist or a bigot.”
This last comment was disputed by another critic, the leader of the Republican minority in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, who did not go to the point of directly confronting Trump but focused his criticism on Fuentes.
“I condemn your ideology, it has no place in our society. The former president can meet with whoever he wants, but I also think that no one should meet with Nick Fuentes, ”he emphasized.
The New York Times He pointed out that McCarthy immediately “lied” when saying that Trump has condemned Fuentes “four times”, but that what the former president has said repeatedly is that he did not know who Fuentes is. “The former president didn’t know who he was,” but also “I don’t think I should associate with him,” she stressed.
“In the Republican Party there is no room for anti-Semitism or white supremacists,” McCarthy emphasized.
Pence is seen as a possible Republican candidate for the 2024 election and has spoken in favor of Trump’s policies and his time in his administration. But he has broken with the former president for his support for the failed coup on January 6, 2021, the attack on the Capitol.
He recently said in an interview with CNN that Trump’s words and tweet on January 6 “were reckless” and that he believes that in 2024 there are “better options” than Trump.
For his part, Republican Senator Marco Rubio, from Florida, commented that Fuentes “is a supplier and spreader of an evil, a poison.” And he said of West: “I don’t know him, but I have some problems with the guy.”
When asked if Trump should convict Fuentes, Rubio said: “I hope he does. Because I know that he is not an anti-Semite. I can say for a fact that Trump is not, but this guy [Fuentes] it’s evil. And he is a disgusting and disgusting person. He is an idiot clown”.
Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Mitt Romney strongly condemned Trump’s hosting.
“I think it’s disgusting to invite people like that to meet with a former president of the United States. I think it has become clear that there is no bottom line to the degree to which President Trump will demean himself and the nation,” Romney said.
Asked if Trump should apologize, Romney said: “He won’t. He believes that he never does anything wrong.
