Donald Trump confirmed that he had dinner with a Holocaust-denying white supremacist in what is the latest major headache for the GOP.
Former President Donald Trump hosted white nationalist and antisemite Nick Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach on Tuesday night, according to multiple people familiar with the event.
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“This past week, Kanye West called me to have dinner at Mar-a-Lago,” he wrote. “Shortly thereafter, he unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about. 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.”
However eventful, the dinner reflects a remarkable moment in an extremely early 2024 campaign cycle: the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination breaking bread with a man who frequently posts racist content and Holocaust revisionism, brought there by a rapper who is launching his own presidential campaign under the shadow of his own antisemitic remarks.
Trump spent Thanksgiving week hanging out with Holocaust-denying white nationalists and being sued for rape.
Even if the mountain of potential criminal cases is set aside because Republican primary voters don’t care about them, the idea that the 2024 Republican nominee could be both found to have raped a woman and is palling around with Holocaust deniers could wreck entire Republican ballots across the country.
Every candidate that appears on a ballot with Trump will be asked about Fuentes and Holocaust denial.
A smaller version of this effect was visible in the Pennsylvania midterm where having Doug Mastriano at the top of the ballot led to Republicans getting their clocks cleaned in race after race. John Fetterman successfully Mastriano to Mehmet Oz. The Republican candidate for governor’s name became shorthand with Pennsylvania voters for radical extremism.
Trump has a wide open path to the Republican nomination because the party is on track to repeat the mistakes of 2016 by running a bloated field of dozens of candidates that will allow the former president to win primaries and caucuses with 30% of the vote.
If Trump is the nominee in 2024, Republicans will be badly beaten again, and the dinner with Holocaust deniers is a taste of what is coming for the GOP in 2024.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association