Trump 'unlikely' to be president after hosting Fuentes, top Republican McConnell suggests
WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - The top two Republicans in the U.S. Congress broke their silence yesterday about former President Donald Trump's dinner last week with white supremacist Nick Fuentes, saying the Republican Party has no place for antisemitism or white supremacy.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and Representative Kevin McCarthy, who may become speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives when Republicans take control in January, had not commented previously on the Nov. 22 meeting.
Trump began his 2024 bid for the White House on Nov. 15, and is Republican voters' top choice, according to opinion polls.
"There is no room in the Republican Party for antisemitism or white supremacy, 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," McConnell told reporters without mentioning Trump by name.
"That would apply to all of the leaders in the party who will be seeking offices," McConnell added, when asked if he would support Trump should he become the party's 2024 presidential nominee.
McCarthy was pressed for his thoughts on the Trump dinner by reporters at the White House, after talks with President
Joe Biden.
"I don't think anybody should be spending any time with Nick Fuentes," said McCarthy, currently the House minority leader. "His views are nowhere within the Republican Party or within this country itself."
Trump has said the encounter at his Mar-A-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, was inadvertent, but the meeting has drawn rare criticism from fellow Republicans, some of whom accused Trump of empowering extremism.
Tuesday's comments were the first by McCarthy and McConnell to address the Trump dinner.