Donald Trump appears to be trying to distance himself from a dinner with Kanye West in which the rapper brought three "unannounced" guests including a notorious Holocaust denier.
One of the guests was white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who was banned from YouTube for violating its hate speech policy.
Trump now says he knew "nothing about" the guests before they "unexpectedly showed up" at his Mar-a-Lago home. He also said the dinner was "quick and uneventful".
In a video posted on his recently reinstated Twitter account titled “Mar-a-Lago Debrief”, West discussed the meeting describing Trump as 'impressed' with Fuentes.
He said: “Trump is really impressed with Nick Fuentes and Nick Fuentes, unlike so many of the lawyers and so many people that he was left with on his 2020 campaign, he’s actually a loyalist."
The Israel Heritage Foundation, a US-based group founded by Holocaust survivors, said: "We the Israel Heritage Foundation condemn & ask former President Trump to apologize, for having dinner with people who are antisemitic, Jew haters & deny the holocaust!”
Posting on Trump's own social media platform Truth Social, Trump wrote: "This past week, Kanye West called me to have dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
"Shortly thereafter, he unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about. We had dinner on Tuesday evening with many members present on the back patio. The dinner was quick and uneventful. They then left for the airport."
Along with Holocaust revisionism, Nick Fuentes has been accused of peddling white supremacist beliefs. He attended the white-nationalist 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville which left one counter-protester dead.
Trump has long been criticised for his courtship of far right figures. In 2017 Trump he was condemned for saying they were “very fine people on both sides” after violence at the Charlottesville rally.
Kanye West, who has legally changed his name to Ye, was recently banned and then reinstated to Twitter for sharing anti-semitic views.
He tweeted saying he was "going death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE"
In the wake of his outburst, he was dropped by his talent agency, fashion brand Balenciaga and bank JP Morgan. Adidas also said they would stop working with him on the lucrative Yeezy shoe line.
West claimed later his net worth dropped by $2bn.
The rapper has also declared he will run for President in 2024. Announcing this a few days before the meeting with Trump, West claims the former President, who is also making a 2024 run, did not take it well.
In the 'Mar-a-Lago Debrief' video, West claimed: "Trump started basically screaming at me at the table, telling me I was going to lose. I mean, has that ever worked for anyone in history? That I'm going to lose? I was like hold on hold on Trump. You're talking to Ye."
He also claimed to have asked Donald Trump to be his running mate, a request that left Trump "most perturbed".
West ran for president in 2020 but only managed to get 70,000 votes.
