Donald Trump’s political bruising in response to his meeting with one of America’s most prominent racists only grew worse due to his unwillingness to take advice from his own advisers and condemn the man’s views, according to a new report.
The Guardian reported on Monday that Mr Trump’s advisers pleaded with him in the hours and days after his meeting with Kanye West to condemn Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and antisemite famous in far-right circles and loathed by the left for his frequently espoused racist and anti-Jewish views. Mr Fuentes attended Mr West’s meeting with the former president at Mar-a-Lago, alongside another highly controversial figure: Mr West’s campaign manager, ex-Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos, who was banned from Twitter for racist tweets about comedian Leslie Jones.
But despite that advice from his closest allies, Mr Trump’s statements attempting to distance himself from Mr Fuentes only claimed that the former president had not known who Mr Fuentes was before the meeting.
“Kanye West very much wanted to visit Mar-a-Lago,” Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Our dinner meeting was intended to be Kanye and me only, but he arrived with a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about.”
It’s just the latest example of Mr Trump being unwilling to forecefully rebuke and reject his most fringe supporters on the racist far right — the most famous example being in the days after the riot at Charlottesville resulting from the Unite the Right rally where neo-Nazis and other avowed racists clashed with counterprotesters and one woman was killed when an individual who had espoused Nazi beliefs rammed his vehicle into a crowd of pedestrians. Mr Trump would later go on to blame the death and violence on both sides of the conflict.
At the meeting, Mr Trump told Mr West that the latter’s 2024 presidential bid was a mistake, according to Mr West, who said he asked the former president to be his running mate.
Mr Fuentes, meanwhile, heaped effusive praise on the former president, according to media reports of the dinner, while urging him to go off-teleprompter more often.
In the days since the meeting, Mr Trump has been loudly criticised by the left and more sheepishly condemned by the right, with on-and-off allies like the Republican Jewish Coalition and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemning the idea of the meeting itself while explicitly avoiding mentioning Mr Trump’s name or often the exact circumstances of the Mar-a-Lago rendezvous.
A number of likely or potential 2024 rivals for the GOP nomination — with the exception of former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie — have stayed completely silent on the issue, likely hoping the media firestorm will pass. Among them include Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.
Reporters, meanwhile, have questioned what this means for the overall scene at Mar-a-Lago. The perception of Mr Trump’s Florida estate is of a porous public club setting where many unvetted persons have access to the former president and his family, something that would typically be viewed as a security nightmare for a current or former president. Adding a layer to the discussion is the recent seizure of presidential records, some classified, from the residence after they were held in apparent defiance of the National Archives.
