Some Republicans criticize Trump for assembly with white supremacist By Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Some Republicans on Sunday criticized Donald Trump for eating with white supremacist Nick Fuentes on the former president’s Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida, at the same time as Trump stated the encounter was inadvertent.

Arkansas Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson accused Trump of empowering extremism.

“I do not suppose it is a good suggestion for a pacesetter who’s setting an instance for the nation or the get together to satisfy with an avowed racist or anti-Semite,” Hutchinson informed CNN.

Consultant James Comer, a Republican lawmaker from Kentucky, stated Trump wanted “higher judgment (on) who he dines with.”

“I’d not take a gathering with that particular person,” Comer informed NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Trump earlier this month stated he plans to hunt the Republican nomination to run for the White Home once more in 2024, although he might face challengers to that bid, together with from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Fuentes has been described as a white supremacist by the U.S. Justice Division and he attended the Jan. 6, 2021, rally in Washington that preceded the assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters. The Anti-Defamation League stated Fuentes as soon as “‘jokingly’ denied the Holocaust and in contrast Jews burnt in focus camps to cookies in an oven.'”

Trump stated the encounter with Fuentes occurred throughout a dinner assembly final week with the rapper Ye, previously often called Kanye West, who himself has drawn widespread criticism for making anti-Semitic statements.

Trump in a message on his Fact Social media web site stated he met with Ye and “we bought alongside nice, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated the entire good issues he stated about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’

“Why would not I agree to satisfy? Additionally, I did not know Nick Fuentes,” Trump wrote.

The White Home slammed Trump, saying in a press release that “bigotry, hate, and antisemitism have completely no place in America — together with at Mar-A-Lago.”

President Joe Biden shrugged off a query from reporters concerning the incident, saying: “You do not need to hear what I believe.”

David Friedman, Trump’s former ambassador to Israel, stated anti-Semites “deserve no quarter amongst American leaders, proper or left.”

“To my pal Donald Trump, you might be higher than this. Even a social go to from an antisemite like Kanye West and human scum like Nick Fuentes is unacceptable,” Friedman wrote on Twitter.