On Tuesday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was asked why he hadn’t yet criticized former President Donald Trump for having dinner with White nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes a week ago.
McCarthy said, “I don’t think anyone should spend any time with Nick Fuentes. He doesn’t belong in this Republican Party at all. I guess President Trump condemned him four times without knowing who he was.”
“Well, he just said he didn’t know who he was,” said a reporter. He didn’t say anything bad about him or his ideas.” McCarthy said, “Well, I don’t agree with his ideas. It’s unacceptable. At all.”
But the reporter got Trump right. First, McCarthy’s claim was not true. At the time McCarthy spoke, Trump hadn’t said anything bad about Fuentes.
At least four times, Trump talked about the dinner and said that he didn’t know Fuentes. None of these comments were critical of Fuentes, though.
In another statement, released by Fox more than five hours after McCarthy’s comments on Tuesday, Trump said that Fuentes hadn’t shared his opinions at the meal and that if he had, “it wouldn’t have been accepted.” This was the most Trump had ever said about Fuentes.
Trump’s Remarks About the Dinner
Here is what Trump said in public about the meal, which took place last Tuesday at his Mar-a-Lago club and house in Florida. Fuentes went to the event with rapper Kanye West, who earlier this year made anti-Semitic comments.
After Axios wrote about the dinner on Friday, Trump said in a statement, “Kanye West wanted to come to Mar-a-Lago.” Kanye and I were supposed to be the only ones at our dinner meeting, but he showed up with someone I’d never seen or heard of before. In the statement, nothing bad was said about Fuentes or his ideas.
In two posts about the dinner that Trump made on Truth Social on Friday, he did not criticize Fuentes or his beliefs. Trump said West “suddenly showed up with three friends I didn’t know,” that the dinner was “short and boring,” that West “didn’t say anything anti-Semitic,” and that “I didn’t know Nick Fuentes.”
In a post on Saturday, Trump retold the story, saying that West was supposed to come alone to get advice but instead came “with three people, two of whom I didn’t know and the other a political guy I haven’t seen in years.” Again, Trump did not say anything bad about Fuentes or his ideas.
Fox published an article on Tuesday evening, more than five hours after McCarthy’s comments, in which Trump said that he had not heard of Fuentes at the time of the dinner and added, “I had no idea what his views were, and they weren’t expressed at the table during our very quick dinner, or it wouldn’t have been accepted.”
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