Saturday, President Joe Biden declined to comment on Donald Trump’s unexpected meal at Mar-a-Lago with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and disgraced musician Kanye West.
While out shopping on Nantucket with his wife Jill and daughter Ashley, he responded to a question from DailyMail.com, “You don’t want to hear what I believe.”
Biden, who is on the island for the Thanksgiving break, participated in Small Business Saturday. During the more than an hour he spent roaming around the downtown shopping district, he visited at least nine stores.
Even other Republicans were outraged when it was revealed that Trump had dinner with Fuentes, an alt-right figure and ‘white nationalist,’ at his Palm Beach residence. Ye, the current moniker of the rapper West, was also present.
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates previously stated: ‘Bigotry, hatred, and antisemitism have no place in America – not even at Mar-a-Lago. Holocaust denial is disgusting and dangerous, and must be rejected with vigor.
Trump acknowledged the dinner in a Friday post on Truth Social, but stated that Fuentes was West’s guest. He did not condemn Fuentes’ beliefs.
“Kanye West invited me to supper at Mar-a-Lago last week. I knew nothing about his three unannounced companions who showed up shortly thereafter. Tuesday evening, many members gathered on the back terrace for dinner. The supper was brief and unremarkable. Afterwards, they went for the airport.
Additionally, the former president stated that he “did not know” Fuentes and that he had provided West both commercial and political advice.
Former President Barack Obama stated on Truth Social, “I warned him he should not run for president and that whatever voters he may have should vote for Trump.”
Anyway, we got along great, he did not express anti-Semitism, and I appreciate all the nice things he said about me on Tucker Carlson.
Recent anti-Semitic remarks made by Kanye West have caused firms such as Adidas to cut connections with him.
In a video shared to Twitter on Friday, Ye said that Trump was “impressed” by Fuentes.
Trump is therefore very impressed with Nick Fuentes, who, unlike so many of the lawyers and people he was left with on his 2020 campaign, is actually a loyalist, according to Ye.
Fuentes is surrounded by controversy.
Fuentes ‘jokingly’ denied the Holocaust in an episode of his podcast and compared Jews burned in Nazi concentration camps to cookies in an oven.
Due to his White nationalist rhetoric, he has been banned from most major social media platforms.
He was on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol on the day of the insurrection on January 6, 2021; he attended the far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017; and he supported Trump’s false claim that he won the 2020 election instead of Joe Biden.
He leads America First, a white supremacist youth organization.
At the dinner with Fuentes and Ye on Tuesday night, Trump was impressed by Fuentes’ ability to “recite statistics and recall speeches from his 2016 campaign,” according to Axios sources, but was unaware of his controversial background.
However, several Republicans have criticized Trump for his dinner selection.
David M. Friedman, an Orthodox Jew who served as Trump’s ambassador to Israel during his presidency, said that Trump was “better than this” for inviting the two individuals.
Friday, he wrote, “To my friend Donald Trump, you are better than this.”
Even a social visit from an antisemite such as Kanye West or human filth such as Nick Fuentes is unacceptable. I implore you to expel, disown, and consign them to the trash heap of history where they belong.
Chris Christie, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, weighed in as well.
‘This is just another example of an atrocious lack of judgment from Donald Trump, which, along with his past poor judgments, make him an untenable general election candidate for the Republican Party in 2024,’ he said.
NBC News has since stated many close to Trump have been sent into a tailspin by the aftermath from the encounter, despite the former president supposedly having no prior awareness of who Fuentes was.
‘This is a f***ing disaster,’ claimed one longtime Trump aide who spoke anonymously.
Trump stated earlier this month he would be a contender for president in 2024.
Ye commented significantly on the dinner on his social media account, where he also claimed he requested Trump to be his vice president when he runs for president in 2024.
‘The thing that Trump was most disturbed about [is] me asking him to be my vice president,’ Kanye said the clip released on his Twitter account on Thanksgiving night.
He continued, ‘I believe that was lower on the list of things that surprised him.
It was the fact that I was intelligent when I entered.
He went on to accuse the former president of succumbing to cancel culture by removing mercurial cabinet officials such as Karen Giorno and Steve Bannon and isolating himself from other public personalities such as Fuentes owing to their beliefs.
West would go on to praise Fuentes as a ‘Trump loyalist,’ highlighting his support for the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021.
‘Unlike so many of the lawyers and some of the individuals [Trump] was left with on his 2020 campaign, Nick Fuentes is genuinely a loyalist,’ West added in a video with the hashtag #YE24.
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