(Washington) Former US President Donald Trump came under fire on Saturday from the White House and part of his camp for having dined this week with rapper Kanye West and a white supremacist.
Kanye West, who calls himself Ye, is at the heart of a series of controversies, among other things for having published remarks denounced as anti-Semitic on his social networks.
PHOTO SAUL LOEB, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Kanye West during his visit to the White House in October 2018
Donald Trump, candidate for the 2024 presidential election, confirmed having dined with the fashion and rap star at Mar-a-Lago, his residence in Florida, immediately attracting strong criticism from the American political class.
“Intolerance, hatred and anti-Semitism have no place in America – including at Mar-a-Lago,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said.
At the heart of the controversy, the participation in this dinner of Nick Fuentes, 24, known for spreading the ideas of white supremacy in his podcasts. According to the American anti-Semitism organization Anti Defamation League (ADL), the youngster also questioned the existence of the Holocaust.
When questioned, US President Joe Biden brushed off the question on Saturday: “You don’t even want to know what I think about it,” he said.
The denunciations also emanated from the camp of Donald Trump.
“Any interview, even courtesy, with an anti-Semite like Kanye West and a scum like Nick Fuentes is unacceptable,” said David Friedman, his former ambassador to Israel. “I want to tell my friend Donald Trump he’s better than this,” he tweeted.
The former White House tenant defended himself on his social network, assuring that the meal was “quick” and “uneventful”. Donald Trump claimed to have “got along very well” with Kanye West and that the latter had made “no anti-Semitic remarks”.
The real estate mogul said the rapper “showed up with three of his friends, who I didn’t know anything about.” “I didn’t know Nick Fuentes,” he reiterated in another post.
Interviewed by AFP in 2017 after his participation in a far-right rally in Charlottesville, Nick Fuentes detailed his fight against “massive immigration” and “multi-culturalism”.