Chris Christie: Trump 'Untenable' Candidate After Dinner With Holocaust Denier Nick Fuentes

The idea that "any serious candidate for higher public office would meet with him is appalling," the Anti-Defamation League also said.
LOADINGERROR LOADING

Donald Trump’s dinner this week at Mar-a-Lago with notorious white supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes makes him an “untenable” candidate for president, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said Friday.

The Anti-Defamation League appeared to agree.

Trump confirmed Friday in a message on Truth Social that he had dinner Tuesday with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, as well as friends of Ye’s, “whom I knew nothing about,” the former president insisted.

Ye was reportedly accompanied by Fuentes, a high-profile, unabashed racist and sexist, who led a conference earlier this year that close Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) attended. Fuentes has compared Holocaust victims to cookies, talked of denying women the right to vote, and led his own crew in a rally outside the U.S. Capitol during last year’s insurrection.

Fuentes attended the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, where marchers chanted “Jews will not replace us” and an attendee killed a counterprotester in a car attack. Trump insisted there were “very fine people on both sides.”

Christie, a onetime Trump ally, was appalled by the Mar-a-Lago meeting.

“This is just another example of an awful lack of judgment from Donald Trump, which, combined with his past poor judgments, make him an untenable general election candidate for the Republican Party in 2024,” Christie, who may make his own run for the presidency, told The New York Times.

Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, agreed it was an “appalling” situation.

The idea that Trump “or any serious contender for higher office would meet with him [Fuentes] and validate him by sharing a meal and spending time is appalling,” he told the Times.

“Nick Fuentes is among the most prominent and unapologetic antisemites in the country,” Greenblatt added. “He’s a vicious bigot and known Holocaust denier who has been condemned by leading figures from both political parties here, including the RJC [Republican Jewish Coalition].”

Matt Brooks, chief executive of the RJC, also issued a statement, without naming Trump, saying: “We strongly condemn the virulent antisemitism of Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, and call on all political leaders to reject their messages of hate and refuse to meet with them.”

The RJC also retweeted a message from former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David M. Friedman telling Trump his meeting with both the antisemitic Ye and Fuentes was “unacceptable.”

Just last Sunday, Trump spoke via remote livestream to a Las Vegas meeting of the RJC.

Ye, who was temporarily locked out of Twitter earlier this fall for posting virulently antisemitic tweets, tweeted a video Thursday about the dinner, and claimed Trump was “really impressed” with Fuentes.

Ye also said in his video that Trump “screamed” at him at one point, apparently when he asked the former president to be his running mate in his own campaign for the presidency.

He also claimed Trump had something obscene to say about his ex-wife Kim Kardashian, and told Ye he could repeat it to her. “That’s the mother of my children,” said a miffed Ye in his video.

Here’s Trump’s version of the dinner, in which he repeats that he “didn’t know” Nick Fuentes:

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot