Former US President Donald Trump is continuing to face backlash over his meeting last week with white nationalist Nick Fuentes, with Senate Republicans across the ideological spectrum criticizing the dinner on Monday, according to The Hill.
“That’s just a bad idea on every level,” Senate Republican Whip John Thune (R-SD) told reporters. “I don’t know who’s advising him on his staff but I hope that whoever that person was got fired.”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), a Trump ally, declared, “There’s no room for antisemitism or white supremacy in the Republican Party. Period.”
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), who voted twice to convict Trump on impeachment charges, let loose on the former President, telling reporters, “There’s no bottom to the degree which he’s willing to degrade himself and the country for that matter. Having dinner with those people was disgusting.”
Asked if he wanted Trump to still be under the GOP’s tent, Romney replied: “I don’t think he should be president of the United States, I don’t think he should be the nominee of our party in 2024. And I certainly don’t want him hanging over our party like a gargoyle.”
Asked if the meeting was a lapse in judgment on Trump’s part, Romney replied, “It’s a character issue.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), a prominent Republican moderate, said Trump should have never met with Fuentes.
“I condemn white supremacy and antisemitism. The president should never have had a meal or even a meeting with Nick Fuentes,” she said, according to The Hill.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) told a reporter for CNN that he hoped Trump would condemn Fuentes.
“I hope he will because I know [Trump] is not an antisemite. I can tell you that for a fact that Trump is not but this guy. [Fuentes] is evil,” he said. “And that guy is a nasty, disgusting person.”
Fuentes and rapper Kanye West, who has had his own issues with antisemitism recently, were seen dining with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate on Tuesday, when West said he had asked the former president to be his vice presidential running mate in 2024.
While sources confirmed to Axios that Fuentes did attend the dinner with Trump and West, Trump told the news outlet that he had never met Fuentes before dining with him.
"Kanye West very much wanted to visit Mar-a-Lago," Trump said in a statement. "Our dinner meeting was intended to be Kanye and me only, but he arrived with a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about."
Meanwhile on Monday, Trump’s former Vice President, Mike Pence, said that Trump should apologize for the dinner with Fuentes.
Speaking to Leland Vittert of NewsNation in an interview, Pence said Trump “was wrong to give a white nationalist, an antisemite and a 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.”
At the same time, the former Vice President stressed that he does not believe Trump is an antisemite himself.
“I don’t believe he’s a racist or a bigot. I would not have been his Vice President if he was,” he stated. “People often forget that the President’s daughter converted to Judaism, his son-in-law is a devout Jew, his grandchildren are Jewish. I think the President demonstrated profoundly poor judgement in giving those individuals a seat at the table and, as I said, I think he should apologize for it, he should denounce them without qualification.”