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POLITICS
GOP lawmakers mostly decline to condemn Trump
over white supremacist meeting
Former Vice President Mike Pence called on the
ex-president to apologize for the dinner with prominent racist and antisemite
Nick Fuentes. Others wouldn't go as far.
By OLIVIA
OLANDER and NANCY VU
11/28/2022
06:34 PM EST
A flurry of
top Republicans on Monday took a familiar approach to Donald Trump’s dinner
with white nationalist and antisemite Nick Fuentes — condemning the former
president’s actions, but not the man himself.
Trump’s
onetime No. 2 was a notable exception.
“President
Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, an antisemite and a Holocaust
denier a seat at the table,” Pence told NewsNation in an interview set to air
later Monday. “And I think he should apologize for it.”
Trump’s
vice president joined several GOP members of Congress in blasting Trump’s
dinner last week with Fuentes, who has often shared racist and
Holocaust-denying content online, and Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye
West who has also made antisemitic comments. The former president’s decision to
dine with Fuentes and Ye soon after launching his 2024 presidential campaign
has already sparked widespread condemnation from Democrats, but Republican lawmakers
have been slower to speak out — and most who did so on Monday stopped short of
Pence’s call for an apology from Trump.
Sen. Marco
Rubio (R-Fla.), who vied against Trump in the 2016 presidential primary, said
he hopes to see the former president condemn Fuentes, “because I know [Trump’s]
not an antisemite. I can tell you that for a fact that Trump is not, but
[Fuentes is] evil ... just a nasty disgusting person. He’s an ass clown, and
he’s trying to legitimize himself by being around a former, maybe future
president.”
Other
Republicans frowned upon the meeting itself while stopping short of outright
condemnation. The Senate GOP’s No. 2 leader, John Thune of South Dakota, called
the dinner a “bad idea on every level” and said whomever on Trump’s staff
advised it should be fired.
“It’s
ridiculous that he had that meeting,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), another
member of GOP leadership. “And that’s all I’m gonna say about it. Just crazy.”
Sen. Steve
Daines (R-Mont.) condemned the idea of antisemitism generally when asked about
the meeting, but went no further.
“We cannot
tolerate antisemitism. Period,” said Daines, who’s set to chair Senate
Republicans’ campaign arm for the 2024 election.
Sen. Mike
Rounds (R-S.D.) said he wasn’t “gonna condemn anybody,” adding that Fuentes is
“just not somebody that I would have a meeting with.” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)
struck a similar note, saying while he wouldn’t personally dine with Fuentes,
“It’s a free country, [Trump] can do whatever he wants.”
Both Rounds
and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a close ally of Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell, said they didn’t know who Fuentes was.
“I’m really
not going to spend any more time worrying about whether or not those two people
are meeting with one another,” Rounds said.
Since his
pre-Thanksgiving dinner with Fuentes and Ye, Trump also has said he did not
know who Fuentes was when the latter — who joined scores of other white
nationalists in attending the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville,
Va., that turned violent — came to dinner at Mar-a-Lago as a guest of Ye.
The dinner
“was intended to be Kanye and me only,” Trump said in a post on his Truth
Social platform, shying away from direct criticism of Fuentes.
Before
Senate Republicans returned to Washington on Monday evening, one of their own
had already tweeted with notably sharp criticism: Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.),
who voted to convict Trump at his second impeachment trial, sought to put
distance between Trump’s actions and the party as a whole.
“President
Trump hosting racist antisemites for dinner encourages other racist
antisemites,” Cassidy tweeted. “These attitudes are immoral and should not be
entertained. This is not the Republican Party.”
But across
the Capitol, most House Republicans have stayed more silent ahead of their
return to Washington on Tuesday.
Rep. James
Comer (R-Ky.), the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee in next
Congress’ GOP majority, told CNN on Monday that he “obviously” condemned the
meeting, which Trump “never should have had.” Comer had been pressed to go
farther than his initial comments Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” in which he
said he personally wouldn’t take a meeting with Fuentes.
Retiring
Arkansas GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson told CNN on Sunday that Trump was setting a
poor example by meeting with a “racist.”
“We need to
avoid those kinds of empowering the extremes. When you meet with people, you
empower,” Hutchinson said. He added: “Every occasion that the question of white
supremacy, or neo-Nazism or denying the Holocaust comes up, you’ve got to be
absolutely clear in your communication that this is not acceptable dogma.”
Burgess
Everett contributed to this report.
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