WASHINGTON — Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday that any person associating with people espousing anti-Semitic views is unlikely to be elected president.
The Senate Republican leader never mentioned former President Donald Trump in his 38-word statement to reporters, but he didn’t have to. McConnell didn’t even need to be prodded with a question he knew was coming at his weekly stakeout in the Capitol rotunda.
“There is no room in the Republican Party for anti-Semitism or white supremacy,” McConnell said as he stepped up the microphone. “And anyone meeting with people advocating that point of view, in my judgment, are highly unlikely to ever be elected president of the United States.”
Last week at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump dined with Nick Fuentes, who the Justice Department has deemed a white supremacist, along with the rapper Ye, who has seen his business empire dissolve in the wake of his own repeated anti-Semitic tirades.
The 24-year-old Fuentes holds an annual gathering of white supremacists called the America First Political Action Conference and has claimed the Republican Party is “run by Jews, atheists and homosexuals.” He reportedly advised Trump that he was a better candidate when he spoke off the cuff.
Since last week, Republican lawmakers have faced pressure to denounce Trump’s summit with Fuentes and many have as they’ve returned to Washington from the Thanksgiving recess.
After a meeting with congressional leadership at the White House on Tuesday, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy stated that Fuentes’ “views are nowhere within the Republican Party and within this country itself.”
“I don’t think anybody should be spending any time with Nick Fuentes. He has no place in the Republican Party,” McCarthy added.
McConnell, when pressed at Tuesday’s press conference on whether he’d support Trump as the 2024 Republican nominee, repeated himself while carefully avoiding specifically naming the former president.
“There is simply no room in the Republican Party for anti-Semitism or white supremacy. That would apply to all of the leaders in the party who will be seeking offices,” McConnell replied.
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