Mike Pence said on Monday that former US president Donald Trump was “wrong” to have dinner at his waterfront Mar-a-Lago resort with White supremacist and false conspiracy theorist Nick Fuentes and rapper Kanye West, and that the former president should apologize.
“President Trump was wrong to give a White nationalist, an antisemite and Holocaust denier a seat at the table, and I think he should apologize for it. And he should denounce those individuals and their hateful rhetoric without qualification,” said the former vice president in a clip released on Monday.
According to Pence, former president Trump “demonstrated profoundly poor judgment in giving those individuals a seat at the table,” he said, adding that he does not think that the ex-president is “a racist or a bigot.”
After hosting Nick Fuentes and Kanye West at his Mar-a-Lago estate last Tuesday, former President Donald Trump was faced with backlash from members of his own party. The meeting took place just a week after the former president announced his candidacy for the upcoming presidential elections in 2024, vowing to “make America great and glorious again.”
The incident is serving as an early litmus test for whether Republican leaders will continue to support former president Trump as he launches yet another presidential campaign.
Donald Trump has stated that he had no idea who Fuentes was prior to the meeting. However, he has so far refused to acknowledge or condemn the positions of either Fuentes or West.
Following the meeting, the former president announced on his Truth Social media site that he had met with Ye and they “got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’”
“Why wouldn’t I agree to meet? Also, I didn’t know Nick Fuentes,” read his post further.
Several other members of the GOP have been critical of the former president’s meeting with Fuentes, and called him out.
On CNN Sunday, retiring Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is also considering a presidential run, called the meeting “very troubling” and said it shouldn’t have happened. “When you meet with people, you empower. And that’s what you have to avoid. You want to diminish their strength, not empower them. Stay away from them,” he said.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is also considered as a potential 2024 opponent, called antisemitism a cancer but did not mention the incident or the president under whom he served.
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