Donald Trump at the center of a new controversy. The former US president was criticized on Saturday from the White House and part of his camp for having dinner this week with rapper Kanye West and a white supremacist. Kanye West, who calls himself Ye, is at the center of a series of controversies, among other things for having published statements denounced as anti-Semitic on his social networks.
Donald Trump, candidate for the 2024 presidential election, confirmed having dined with the fashion and rap star at Mar-a-Lago, his residence in Florida, immediately drawing strong criticism from the US political class.
“Bigotry, hate and anti-Semitism have no place in the United States, not even at Mar-a-Lago,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said.
They denounce the presence of a Holocaust denier
The participation in this dinner of Nick Fuentes, 24, known for spreading the ideas of white supremacy in his podcasts, was particularly controversial. According to the American anti-Semitic organization Anti Defamation League (ADL), the young man also questioned the existence of the Holocaust.
When asked, US President Joe Biden dismissed the question on Saturday: “You don’t even want to know what I think about it,” he said.
The allegations also emanated from the camp of Donald Trump. “Any interview, even courtesy, with an anti-Semite like Kanye West and scum like Nick Fuentes is unacceptable,” said David Friedman, his former ambassador to Israel. “I want to tell my friend Donald Trump it’s better than this,” he tweeted.
Trump says he didn’t know Fuentes
The former tenant of the White House defended himself on his social networks, assuring that the food was “quick” and “without incident.” Donald Trump claimed to have “got along very well” with Kanye West and that the latter had made “no anti-Semitic comments”.
The real-estate mogul said the rapper “showed up with three of his friends, who he knew nothing about.” “I did not know Nick Fuentes,” he reiterated in another publication.
Interviewed by AFP in 2017 after his participation in a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Nick Fuentes detailed his fight against “mass immigration” and “multiculturalism”.
Source: BFM TV
