Trump: The anti-Semites who came to dinner
It’s easy to feel numbed to Donald Trump’s offensive, attention-seeking antics, said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times, but “I confess to being astonished that the former president dined last week with one of the country’s most influential white supremacists,” Nick Fuentes.
The 24-year-old podcaster and YouTube personality was brought along by Kanye “Ye” West, whom Trump invited to his Mar-a-Lago club shortly after Ye’s rants about going “death con 3” on the Jews. Fuentes is a Holocaust denier who has endeared himself to the GOP’s MAGA wing by arguing that “Christians should have all the power,” said Matt Lewis in The Daily Beast. He’s also suggested executing lawmakers who voted to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, and stripping women of the right to vote. Fuentes and Trump reportedly hit it off, with Trump turning to Ye to say, “I really like this guy. He gets me.”
“Dining with Nazis” is a bad look, of course, said Gerard Baker in The Wall Street Journal. But this “symposium of disordered minds” was not Trump endorsing Fuentes’ hateful views. Trump is no anti-Semite. He is, however, guilty of having “limitless capacity for hearing people tell him things he wants to hear—whoever they are.” Fuentes reportedly gushed at the dinner that Trump is “one of the greatest Americans that has ever lived,” and urged him to ratchet up his rhetoric, so Trump let him talk. That’s indefensible. It feels as if a lot of people “are just starting to tire of the whole unending, enervating circus.”
Even Republicans who’ve been afraid to criticize Trump expressed disgust, said Karen Tumulty in The Washington Post. Former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Arkansas Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson all scolded Trump for breaking bread with Fuentes. “Have these critics been in a coma since 2015?” asked David Frum in The Atlantic. Trump launched his political career by insisting Barack Obama was born in Africa, and has been cozying up to bigots, extremists, and neo-Nazis for years. “Only the political calculations have possibly changed.” Trump lost in 2020, and his handpicked MAGA candidates took a beating in the midterms. So the GOP now views Trump as a loser—someone who can cost them power rather than delivering it. If Trump somehow wins the 2024 nomination, “the deal will be on again,” and Republicans will return to excusing the inexcusable.