Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell(R-Kentucky) indicated disapproval of former President Donald Trump‘s decision to entertain rapper Kanye West, who goes by the name Ye now, and white supremacist Nick Fuentes for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate last week.
“First, let me just say that there is no room in the Republican Party for antisemitism or white supremacy. And anyone meeting with people advocating that point of view, in my judgment, are highly unlikely to ever be elected president of the United States,” McConnell said at his weekly press conference.
Trump formally launched his campaign for 2024 shortly after the midterm elections in early November.
Trump and McConnell have exchanged barbs since McConnell refused to support Trump’s claims of a “stolen” and “rigged” election in 2020. McConnell even laid blame on Trump for the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, calling the former President “practically and morally responsible” for inciting the breach. Trump recently called for McConnell to be replaced as GOP Senate leader.
McConnell isn’t the only prominent Republican to publically condemn Trump over the dinner with West and Fuentes.
“I don’t think anybody should be spending any time with Nick Fuentes,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) told reporters on Tuesday. “He has no place in this Republican Party. I think President Trump came out four times and condemned him and didn’t know who he was.”
McCarthy was referring to Trump’s claim that he did not know who Fuentes was and that West brought him to dinner as a guest.
Trump told Fox News in a Tuesday interview that had he known Fuentes’ views, “It wouldn’t have been accepted.”
