By: Fern Sidman
Since the news emerged over the weekend concerning the now infamous meeting that former President Donald Trump held at this Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida with disgraced rapper Kanye West, and the avowed holocaust denying, white supremacist, Jew-hater Nick Fuentes, condemnations of all stripes have been flowing in.
Over the past few weeks, Kanye West, now referred to as “Ye,” has spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and tropes to his many followers and West’s tirades have incited other anti-Semitic acts in Los Angeles and Jacksonville, Florida. Nick Fuentes is an alt-right media personality who espouses white supremacism and denies the Holocaust. Since 2017, he has been hosting a livestream show called America First, where he regularly spouts dangerous and bigoted views.
The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Fuentes as advocating for the Republican Party to move further to the extreme far-right end of the political spectrum. An outspoken admirer of fascists such as Mussolini, Fuentes emerged as an influential figure on the national stage during the now-infamous “Stop the Steal” movement.
Through his nightly “America First” show and his America First Foundation, Fuentes has stated his aim is to remake the Republican Party into “a truly reactionary party.” In a February 2022 broadcast, Fuentes said of the Jews: “America, for what it’s worth, was founded by white Christians. It was not founded by Jewish people. It was not founded by Judeo-Christians. It was founded by white Christians. And white Christians are in the majority. Christianity is the religion of this nation. Not Judaism, not the Talmud, not that stuff. It’s just what it is. It’s just a fact. And, you know what? If we’re going to make America great again, we’ve gotta talk about this anti-white thing that’s going on. And if we want to restore America, we’ve got to make America a Christian nation again. And you can understand why influential Jewish people in conservative media are not really gung-ho about that. They’re not promoting white identity. “
Early last month, West announced that he would go “death con 3 on Jewish people.” Twitter removed his hateful tweet, and over a dozen companies with which West was working with severed their contractual ties with the rapper after he adamantly refused to apologize or rescind his odious remarks.
While politics makes strange bedfellows, many are in a quandary as to why West brought Fuentes to the former president’s estate. After all, Fuentes, is an equal opportunity hater and his racist credentials indicate that his loathing for blacks is right up there on his priority list along with his anti-Jewish animus. One can only surmise that the common denominator between West and Fuentes is that they share a palpable opprobrium for Jews.
The problem here is Trump’s involvement with both of them. As the former president’s political alliances continue to rapidly evaporate before his very eyes and others have made it abundantly clear that they have distanced themselves from him, including his daughter Ivanka who has voiced her wish not to be an active participant in his presidential campaign, Trump is now grasping for straws. It appears that just about anyone who gushes over him, especially on prime time television, as did West, is indeed a true friend and is now eligible to be invited to his home to dine with.
This ill conceived meeting at Mar-a-Lago has now placed Trump in the center of the kind of public relations nightmare that is almost impossible to wake up from.
On Tuesday, NBC News reported that Fuentes spoke to them of the Trump meeting and said, “We saw everybody in the dining room get up and start applauding, and then the president entered. He greeted us, and he invited Ye into dinner and Ye said that he wanted to bring us with him to the table. So we walked in and Ye took some pictures with some of the guests in the dining room and then we sat down at the table.”
Trump made sure they sat at his specially reserved table on the patio, for all to see, according to Fuentes, as was reported by NBC News,
Ye criticized Trump for not doing enough to help pay the legal bills of those arrested in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots; and he also told Trump he might run for president against him and said Trump should instead be his running mate, according to the NBC News report. This apparently angered the former president, who attacked Ye’s ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, according to two dinner participants and Ye, who blasted out a “Mar-a-Lago debrief” video to his 32.2 million Twitter followers the next day.
“Trump is really impressed with Nick Fuentes,” Ye said in the video, as was reported by NBC News.
Fuentes said that he praised Trump as “my hero” and criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for his potential GOP primary challenge to Trump.
Israel National News reported that former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman responded to former Trump’s meeting with Fuentes and West.
“To my friend Donald Trump, you are better than this,” Friedman wrote. “Even a social visit from an anti-Semite like Kanye West and human scum like Nick Fuentes is unacceptable. I urge you to throw those bums out, disavow them and relegate them to the dustbin of history where they belong.”
INN reported that he added: “I condemned Barak Obama associating with Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright.” the former Ambassador added. “This is no different. Anti-Semites deserve no quarter among American leaders, right or left.”
The strongly worded condemnations of Trump from Jewish organizations that have previously thrown their support behind him have been issued to the media.
Recently, the Zionist Organization of America feted Trump with their auspicious Theodore Herzl medallion at their gala dinner in Manhattan. It now appears that they have some strong differences with the president they once lauded for his incredibly pro-Israel record while in office.
Mort Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America released a statement to the media. He said: “President Trump’s stirring call to the entire nation, during his 2019 State of the Union Address, to confront the vile poison of anti-Semitism anywhere and everywhere it occurs, and to condemn those who spread this venom, was the clearest statement ever made by a U.S. president about what we need to do to stop the dangerous horrors of Jew-hatred.
The Zionist Organization of America calls upon President Trump to live up to his own powerful words, to condemn in the strongest possible terms Jew-hater Kanye West and avowed holocaust denying, white supremacist, Jew-hater Nick Fuentes. ZOA deplores the fact that President Trump had a friendly dinner with such vile anti-Semites. His dining with Jew-haters helps legitimize and mainstream anti-Semitism and must be condemned by everyone.
It is particularly incumbent on America’s influential ex-presidents to confront and condemn the anti-Semites who are spreading Jew-hatred throughout our country now. Therefore, ZOA also demands former Presidents Clinton and Obama condemn avowed anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, the source of much of Kanye West’s and other Jew-haters’ bile. President Obama must finally come clean about the infamous 2005 photo of him and vicious anti-Semite Farrakhan standing together smiling from ear to ear and his helping organize Farrakhan’s major march on Washington. President Clinton must denounce Farrakhan, after sharing a stage with him and smilingly shaking his hand at Aretha Franklin’s funeral in 2018.
President Trump must not sully his extraordinary presidential record of pro-Israel actions and combating anti-Semitism on college campuses and elsewhere by failing to clearly condemn vile anti-Semites Kanye West and Nick Fuentes.”
Also on Monday, the Coalition of Jewish Values said in a statement released to the media that they have called upon Trump to “repudiate the anti-Semitic rhetoric of two leading purveyors of anti-Semitism, Kanye West and Nick Fuentes.”
“A former President does not enjoy the luxury of meeting over dinner with any oddball,” said CJV Vice President Rabbi Dov Fischer, “especially when that fool is a self-declared hater. It was wrong for former President Obama to affiliate with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan. It is wrong for President Biden to praise Jew-hater Rashida Tlaib and fail to exert his leadership to rein in the Jew-hatred of Ilhan Omar. And it is wrong when President Trump breaks bread with such individuals.”
The CJV underscored that West himself should not have been admitted to Trump’s estate without clear repudiation of his own anti-Semitic statements. The organization represents over 2,000 traditional, Orthodox rabbis as the largest rabbinic public policy organization in America.
Also weighing in on this hot button issue was the Orthodox Union, the nation’s largest Orthodox Jewish umbrella organization. They strongly criticized former President Trump for recently hosting Kanye West and Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago. In a statement to the media, they said: “West and Fuentes have made a name for themselves as leaders in spreading vicious anti-Semitism. The association of a former president with such figures is extremely troubling.”
“The level of anti-Semitism being expressed, anti-Semitic acts at a very elevated level, and the acceptability of anti-Semitism — it is all creating an environment which is, thank God, unusual for the United States, and it has to be nipped in the bud. That’s it. That’s the moment we’re in,” said Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union.
The leadership of the Orthodox Union stated:
“The association of a former President of the United States with some of the most vicious anti-Semitic figures in this country is deeply worrisome. We call on former President Trump to condemn these individuals and cut ties with them and their associates. As a major public figure, Donald Trump has a responsibility to denounce hate in all of its forms and lead by example for his many followers. Anything less gives a stamp of approval to the world’s oldest hatred. “
Elan Carr, who served as the State Department’s anti-Semitism monitor under Trump, wrote on Twitter that he was disappointed with the former president, as was reported by World Israel News.
“No responsible American, and certainly no former President, should be cavorting with the likes of Nick Fuentes and Kanye West,” Carr wrote Monday.
“To placate anti-Semitism is to promote anti-Semitism. President Trump must condemn these dangerous men and their disgusting and un-American views.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League said of Trump’s meeting with West and Fuentes, “The normalization of anti-Semitism is here,” as was reported by the New York Times.
On Monday afternoon, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic majority leader, went to the Senate floor to denounce Trump’s actions as “disgusting and dangerous,” then called them “pure evil,” the Times reported.
“There is no room in the Republican Party for anti-Semitism or white supremacy,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters on Capitol Hill. “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.”
“I don’t think anybody should be spending any time with Nick Fuentes,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said at the White House after a meeting that President Biden convened with congressional leaders, as was reported on Tuesday by Yahoo News. “He has no place in this Republican Party.”
Award winning columnist for the Jewish News Syndicate, Jonathan S. Tobin said in his column on Monday on the JNS.org web site, “If pro-Israel Republicans think former President Donald Trump will apologize or make amends in any way for choosing to have a public dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort home with two notorious anti-Semites, they haven’t been paying attention to how he has conducted his public career.”
Tobin added that, “if they think they can weather this controversy by trying to divert attention from what he’s done by pointing to the way their Democrat opponents tolerate and even support anti-Semitism on the left, they’re equally delusional.”
He drew the conclusion that, “it’s incumbent on those who have staunchly defended him (Trump) until now to do the hard thing and concede that he has now done something they wouldn’t forgive or forget if it had been a Democratic president or former one who did it.”
Also on Monday, former Vice President Mike Pence said that he did not believe Trump was an anti-Semite or a racist. The Times reported that he told Leland Vittert on the NewsNation program that Trump had “demonstrated profoundly poor judgment in giving those individuals a seat at the table” and that he should apologize and “denounce them without qualification.”
Other elected officials also piped up with their own condemnations of the nation’s 45th president.
The NYT reported that on Monday, Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, wrote on Twitter, “President Trump hosting racist anti-Semites for dinner encourages other racist anti-Semites. These attitudes are immoral and should not be entertained. This is not the Republican Party.” Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, denounced the dinner as well, the Times reported.
Appearing on CNN on Sunday, Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, said, “I hope someday we won’t have to be responding to what former President Trump has said or done. In this instance, it’s important to respond.” The NYT reported that he accused the former president of “empowering” the country’s bigoted extremes.
The NYT also reported that Ari Fleischer, a former press secretary under George W. Bush and a member of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s board, said he accepted Trump’s statement that he didn’t know Mr. Fuentes. But he said Trump should have added that, “had he known, Fuentes would never have been allowed into Mar-a-Lago.”
He added in an email to the NYT: “I should also mention that I do not consider Trump an anti-Semite and I remain appreciative of his deep support for Israel and for the four peace treaties he helped secure in the Middle East. I do consider the former president someone who mistakenly succumbs to flattery from dangerous places.”
On Tuesday, Israel National News reported that West and two far-right activists walked out of an online interview Monday night, in the middle of a discussion on West’s recent comments regarding Jews.
The incident occurred on an episode of “Timcast”, a podcast hosted by Tim Pool, which featured West, along with right-wing pundit Milo Yiannopoulos, and activist as well as Fuentes, INN reported.
INN reported that during the conversation, West lamented the response he has faced over his recent comments, prompting Pool to agree the rapper has been mistreated by the mainstream media.
“I just gotta go right to the heart of this anti-Semite claim that’s happening. This is something- if you read the definition, it says you can’t claim that there’s multiple people inside of banks, or in media that are all Jewish, or you’re anti-Semitic. And that’s the truth. Like, it’s the truth,” West said.
“I’m saying, like, I’ve been labeled anti-Semite, right? So there’s different beliefs about our bloodlines, you know, like the documentary that Kyrie Irving posted and in general, America has been left ignorant and history has been changed.”
“So when we start questioning things that question the indoctrination, then you immediately, get you know… demonized, demonetized and what’s so beautiful about this time is everyone got to see what’s really been happening. And now we can really understand, we can see that Rahm Emanuel was next to Obama and Jared Kushner was right next to Trump, “ West said, as was reported by INN.
In a related development, the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement issued a statement to the media on Monday confirming that New York City Mayor Eric Adams will be attending and speaking at the second annual “Mayors Summit Against Anti-Semitism,” hosted by the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement in Athens, Greece.
The Combat Anti-Semitism Movement (CAM) is a global coalition engaging more than 600 partner organizations and nearly two million people from a diverse array of religious, political, and cultural backgrounds in the common mission of fighting the world’s oldest hatred.
From November 30 to December 1, municipal leaders from over 50 different cities worldwide will convene to discuss each leader’s experiences dealing with anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry to collaborate on new approaches to addressing these escalating issues, according to the statement.
Mayor Adams joins nearly a dozen other U.S. mayors at the summit. Cities such as Paris, Los Angeles, Richmond, Vienna, Albuquerque, Fort Lauderdale, and many more will also be rep
resented.
Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou and Athens Mayor Kostas Bakoyannis will be addressing attendees at the summit as well. The event will conclude with the signing of a joint declaration to confront anti-Semitism.
