Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt stated Donald Trump is “trying to make America hate again” after the previous president admitted to having dinner with a outstanding white supremacist days after asserting his 2024 presidential marketing campaign.
“For Donald Trump to dine with notorious white supremacists and unrepentant bigots ― I think, at a minimum, it’s clarifying,” Greenblatt stated on CNN. “He’s trying to make America hate again and running arguably the most unapologetic white nationalist presidential campaign that we’ve ever seen.”
Trump hosted a dinner on Tuesday at his Mar-a-Lago resort with white nationalist activist Nick Fuentes and Ye, the rapper previously often known as Kanye West, whose skilled empire has been upended by a sequence of latest antisemitic tirades and subsequent allegations of office misconduct.
Amid livid backlash over the assembly, together with from some Republicans, Trump has distanced himself from Ye and insisted he didn’t know who Fuentes was. According to Trump, the dinner was imagined to be with Ye, who introduced Fuentes as his visitor.
Greenblatt stated it “makes no difference” that Trump claimed to not know Fuentes.
“It’s demonstrably unpresidential when you can’t demonstrate a basic knowledge of people in public life,” he stated, noting that in 2016, Trump claimed to not know “anything about” David Duke and refused to sentence the previous KKK chief after getting his endorsement.
Ye, who has been accused by former staff of praising Adolf Hitler and Nazis in enterprise conferences, posted a number of movies on Thursday claiming that Trump was “really impressed” with Fuentes. Sources additionally informed The New York Times and Axios that Trump praised Fuentes on the dinner and at one level stated, “he gets me.”
Fuentes has ties to key allies of Trump, similar to Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.). Both lawmakers attracted livid backlash earlier this yr after they spoke at a white nationalist convention organized by Fuentes.
In January, Fuentes was subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters looking for to overturn the 2020 election. At least seven folks with connections to Fuentes’ America First motion have been charged with federal crimes referring to the riot.
