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Former President Donald Trump has slammed the "crazy" reaction to him dining with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and rapper Kanye West.
Trump had dinner with West, now known as Ye, and Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago club on Tuesday night, a week after announcing his 2024 campaign for the White House.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, Fuentes is a "white supremacist pundit" who hosts a livestream show that has attracted a cult-like following of supporters known as "Groypers," who see "their bigoted views as necessary to preserve white, European-American identity and culture."
Ye, who has also announced a 2024 run for president, has also made a series of anti-semitic comments in recent weeks, sparkling a backlash that included Adidas cutting ties with him.
The meeting has been widely condemned, with Trump's former ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, saying the visit was "unacceptable."
Trump has since taken to his Truth Social platform to repeatedly defend the meeting.
"So I help a seriously troubled man, who just happens to be black, Ye (Kanye West), who has been decimated in his business and virtually everything else, and who has always been good to me, by allowing his request for a meeting at Mar-a-Lago, alone, so that I can give him very much needed 'advice,'" he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
"He shows up with 3 people, two of which I didn't know, the other a political person who I haven't seen in years."
Trump added that he told the rapper "don't run for office, a total waste of time, can't win." before saying that "Fake News went CRAZY" over the meeting.
A day earlier, Trump wrote that he "knew nothing" about Fuentes before he arrived at Mar-a-Lago and said Ye had asked him for advice.
"We got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on 'Tucker Carlson,'" Trump wrote. "Why wouldn't I agree to meet? Also, I didn't know Nick Fuentes."
Ye, in a video posted on Twitter, offered a different version of events.
He said Trump started "basically screaming" at him that he was going to lose the presidential election in 2024.
Ye also said that Trump was "really impressed" by Fuentes. "Nick Fuentes, unlike so many of the lawyers of so many people that he was left with on his 2020 campaign, he's actually a loyalist," Ye said.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden was asked by a reporter for his thoughts about Trump "having dinner with a white nationalist."
"You don't want to hear what I think," he replied.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates told Newsweek: "Bigotry, hate, and antisemitism have absolutely no place in America—including at Mar-A-Lago. Holocaust denial is repugnant and dangerous, and it must be forcefully condemned."
Trump also called the Justice Department "corrupt" in another post on Saturday, alongside a Washington Examiner article about Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing two major investigations involving Trump.
Newsweek has contacted a spokesperson for Trump for further comment.
Update 11/27/22, 8:40 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with a statement from White House spokesman Andrew Bates.
About the writer
Khaleda Rahman is Newsweek's National Correspondent based in London, UK. Her focus is reporting on education and national news. Khaleda ... Read more