There’s growing backlash against former President Donald Trump over his dinner with an antisemitic activist.
The former president is facing criticism for meeting with Nick Fuentes, an outspoken white nationalist and anti-Semite.
Trump blames the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, for bringing Fuentes to the dinner and claims he did not know who he was. He released a series of statements Friday trying to explain the circumstances of the meeting.
“Kanye West very much wanted to visit Mar-a-Lago. Our dinner meeting was intended to be Kanye and me only, but he arrived with a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about,” Trump said in his first statement released by his campaign.
Not long after, Trump took to his social media network to say that West and “three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about” had “unexpectedly showed up” at his club.
“We had dinner on Tuesday evening with many members present on the back patio. The dinner was quick and uneventful. They then left for the airport,” he wrote.
The 24-year-old Fuentes is a Holocaust denier, and one of the most prominent white supremacists in the country.
West has also been under fire for recent antisemitic statements of his own.
Some Republicans, including Trump’s former vice president, are calling him out about the dinner meeting.
“President Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, an anti-Semite, and a Holocaust denier, a seat at the table, and I think he should apologize for it,” former Vice President Mike Pence said during an exclusive interview with NewsNation.
Trump’s former Ambassador to Israel David Friedman called the visit ‘unacceptable’ and urged Trump to disavow both West and Fuentes.
Antisemitism on the Rise in the US
As CBN News reported last week, New York police found a Glock semi-automatic pistol, a ghost gun, a hunting knife, and a Nazi armband on two men suspected of plotting an attack on a synagogue. It’s the latest incident in a shocking rise of antisemitism in America.
The FBI and Homeland Security point to an unprecedented number of potential threats, along with a rise in hate-filled rhetoric and they warn their law enforcement partners, along with the Jewish community, to stay vigilant.
The New York arrests come only two weeks after the FBI alerted New Jersey synagogues to a broad threat against them.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) tracks antisemitic harassment, vandalism, and assault in the US. Last year, it recorded 2,717 incidents, a 34 percent increase from 2020 and the highest number since it began tracking in 1979.
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) states that one in four American Jews have been the target of antisemitism in the last 12 months. Those cases included physical attacks, verbal harassment, and online targeting.
The AJC calls it a severe problem, requiring urgent attention.
Over the weekend, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a potential 2024 GOP presidential candidate, also denounced antisemitism.
“Anti-Semitism is a cancer,” Pompeo wrote, adding: “We stand with the Jewish people in the fight against the world’s oldest bigotry.”
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