McCarthy disavows white nationalist
But stops short of faulting Trump for dining with racist
WASHINGTON — Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, on Tuesday disavowed one of the country’s most prominent young white supremacists but declined to criticize former President Donald Trump directly for dining with the man last week at his private club in Florida.
McCarthy had been silent for days on Trump’s decision to have dinner with Nick Fuentes, the racist Holocaust denier who leads the white nationalist movement America First, and Ye, the musical artist and provocateur who has changed his name from Kanye West and who has also made antisemitic comments.
Pressed about the dinner by reporters Tuesday as he left a meeting at the White House, McCarthy criticized Fuentes and comments made by Ye but stopped short of condemning Trump for meeting with them.
“I condemn his ideology; it has no place in society at all,” McCarthy said of Fuentes.
“The president can have meetings with who he wants; I don’t think anybody, though, should have a meeting with Nick Fuentes,” McCarthy said later. “And his views shouldn’t — are nowhere within the Republican Party or within this country itself.”
He then falsely claimed that Trump had condemned Fuentes “four times”; the former president has never done so. Trump has repeatedly said that he did not know who Fuentes was
but has not denounced his views or statements, which include unabashed racism and antisemitism.
“The president didn’t know who he was,” McCarthy said.
Asked whether it was appropriate for Trump to dine with Ye given the artist’s antisemitic remarks, McCarthy told reporters, “I don’t think those are right comments, and I don’t think he should have associated with them.”
At the U.S. Capitol, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, broke his silence on the dinner with a direct
rebuke of Trump, although he did not name the former president.
McConnell began his weekly news conference by addressing the episode unprompted, predicting that voters would punish Trump’s behavior.
“There is no room in the Republican Party for antisemitism or white supremacy,” McConnell said, “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.”
Asked later whether he would support Trump if
he secured the Republican presidential nomination again, McConnell reiterated his comments and added, “That would apply to all of the leaders in the party who will be seeking offices.”
McCarthy’s unwillingness to criticize Trump, by contrast, reflected his reluctance to offer a full-throated condemnation of members of his party who have ties to right-wing extremists, particularly at a time when he is facing a revolt on his right flank that has imperiled his campaign to become speaker.
It was far from the first time McCarthy has
struggled to address the extremism problem in the Republican ranks, especially around Fuentes, who marched at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 and outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In February, after Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona appeared at Fuentes’ annual white supremacist gathering, McCarthy issued a rare public rebuke of the pair, calling their behavior “appalling and wrong.”
“The party should not be associated any time, any place with somebody who is antisemitic,” McCarthy said at the time, calling Greene’s failure to leave the stage after Fuentes praised Adolf Hitler “unacceptable.”
Neither Greene nor Gosar received any punishment, and Greene has boasted that McCarthy, whom she is supporting for speaker, will give her a powerful role in the new Congress. Gosar had previously attended the America First conference as its keynote speaker and wrote to the FBI on his official letterhead claiming that Fuentes had been placed on a no-fly list.
Asked Tuesday at the White House about the lawmakers’ ties to Fuentes, including Greene, McCarthy said, “she denounced him.”
Greene had never publicly done so until Tuesday, when a “PBS NewsHour” reporter pointed out on Twitter that she had never issued any condemnation of Fuentes. Days after she spoke at Fuentes’ conference, she told CBS News: “I do not know Nick Fuentes. I have never heard him speak. I have never seen a video. I do not know what his views are, so I am not aligned with anything that is controversial.”
In a later statement, Greene said she was being attacked by “the Pharisees in the Republican Party for being willing to break barriers and speak to a lost generation of young people who are desperate for love and leadership.” That was an apparent reference to an ancient group of Jewish leaders whom Jesus called hypocrites.
On Tuesday, Greene said on Twitter: “Of course I denounce Nick Fuentes and his racists anti-semitic ideology. I can’t comprehend why the media is obsessed with him.”