Democrat Senate Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) condemned former President Donald Trump on the Senate floor Monday for hosting Kanye West and “notorious bigot” Nick Fuentes for dinner, arguing that giving an antisemite “even the smallest platform” is “pure evil.”
Schumer dedicated nearly two minutes on the Senate floor to discuss the “disgusting news” over Thanksgiving weekend that Trump dined with Fuentes and West at Mar-a-Lago.
“Last week it was reported that Donald Trump, the former president of the United States and Republican standard bearer, had dinner at Mar-a-Lago with a notorious bigot who fancies himself a leading thinker on the extreme edges of the hard right, embracing everything from white nationalism, to antisemitism, to outright Holocaust denial,” Schumer said.
Schumer called the dinner “disgusting” and “dangerous.”
“For a former president to sit down and have dinner with a high-profile antisemite is disgusting, and dangerous,” Schumer said. “To give an antisemite, even the smallest platform much less than audience over dinner is pure evil.”
In recent months, West has been widely condemned and has lost business deals due to his antisemitic rhetoric. Further, Fuentes is an outspoken Holocaust denier with a litany of racist remarks in his past. Fuentes is now reportedly working for West’s purported 2024 presidential campaign.
After reports about the dinner surfaced, Trump said he only invited West to dinner and blamed West for bringing Fuentes along.
U.S. President Donald Trump meets with rapper Kanye West in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, October 11, 2018. (Photo by SEBASTIAN SMITH/AFP via Getty Images)
“So I help a seriously troubled man, who just happens to be black, Ye (Kanye West), who has been decimated in his business and virtually everything else, and who has always been good to me, by allowing his request for a meeting at Mar-a-Lago, alone, so that I can give him very much needed ‘advice,’” Trump wrote on social media.
“He shows up with 3 people, two of which I didn’t know, the other a political person who I haven’t seen in years,” the former president added. “I told him don’t run for office, a total waste of time, can’t win. Fake News went CRAZY,” Trump said.
Trump said he and West discussed politics and that he discouraged West from running for president in 2024.
“Anyway, we got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’ Why wouldn’t I agree to meet? Also, I didn’t know Nick Fuentes,” Trump said on social media.
However, Schumer called out Trump over his failure to condemn Fuentes once he discovered Fuentes’ ties to white supremacy and antisemitism.
Nick Fuentes, the leader of a white nationalist group, speaks to his followers in Washington, DC, on November 14, 2020 (Photo by Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“Even assuming the former president didn’t realize Mr. Fuentes was coming to Mara Lago, for him to refuse to condemn Fuentes and his bigoted words after the dinner is appalling, and it is dangerous,” Schumer said.
Schumer also called on his Republican colleagues in the Senate to speak out against Trump’s dinner with Fuentes and West.
“I vociferously condemned the former president’s decision to meet with this antisemite and urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do the same.”
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.