Trump (The Former Guy) sent a message to his cult by inviting the rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West) and white nationalist Nick Fuentes to dine with him at Mar-a-Lago. Fuentes is a Holocaust denier, a racist, and an anti-Semite, also a homophobe, of course. Ye is a loud anti-Semite. Are Ye and Fuentes friends, even though Ye is Black? Trump claims he didn’t know Fuentes but it’s hard to believe anything he says, or that a total stranger would be admitted to dine with him.
This is what Heather Cox Richardson said about the dinner:
On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, November 22, former president Trump hosted the antisemitic artist Ye, also known as Kanye West, for dinner at a public table at Mar-a-Lago along with political operative Karen Giorno, who was the Trump campaign’s 2016 state director in Florida. Ye brought with him 24-year-old far-right white supremacist Nick Fuentes. Fuentes attended the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and in its wake, he committed to moving the Republican Party farther to the right.
Fuentes has openly admired Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and authoritarian Russian president Vladimir Putin, who is currently making war on Russia’s neighbor Ukraine. A Holocaust denier, Fuentes is associated with America’s neo-Nazis.
In February 2020, Fuentes launched the America First Political Action Conference to compete from the right with the Conservative Political Action Conference. In May 2021, on a livestream, Fuentes said: “My job…is to keep pushing things further. We, because nobody else will, have to push the envelope. And we’re gonna get called names. We’re gonna get called racist, sexist, antisemitic, bigoted, whatever.… When the party is where we are two years later, we’re not gonna get the credit for the ideas that become popular. But that’s okay. That’s our job. We are the right-wing flank of the Republican Party. And if we didn’t exist, the Republican Party would be falling backwards all the time.”
Fuentes and his “America First” followers, called “Groypers” after a cartoon amphibian (I’m not kidding), backed Trump’s lies that he had actually won the 2020 election. At a rally shortly after the election, Fuentes told his followers to “storm every state capitol until Jan. 20, 2021, until President Trump is inaugurated for four more years.” Fuentes and Groypers were at the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol, and at least seven of them have been charged with federal crimes for their association with that attack. The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol subpoenaed Fuentes himself.
Accounts of the dinner suggest that Trump and Fuentes hit it off, with Trump allegedly saying, “I like this guy, he gets me,” after Fuentes urged Trump to speak freely off the cuff rather than reading teleprompters and trying to appear presidential as his handlers advise.
But Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2024 just days ago, and being seen publicly with far-right white supremacist Fuentes—in addition to Ye—indicates his embrace of the far right. His team told NBC’sMarc Caputo that the dinner was a “f**king nightmare.” Trump tried to distance himself from the meeting by saying he didn’t know who Fuentes was, and that he was just trying to help Ye out by giving the “seriously troubled” man advice, but observers noted that he did not distance himself from Fuentes’s positions.
Republican lawmakers have been silent about Trump’s apparent open embrace of the far right, illustrating the growing power of that far right in the Republican Party. Representatives Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) have affiliated themselves with Fuentes, and while their appearances with him at the America First Political Action Conference last February drew condemnation from Republican leader Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), now McCarthy desperately needs the votes of far-right Republicans to make him speaker of the House. To get that support, he has been promising to deliver their wish list—including an investigation into President Joe Biden’s son Hunter—and appears willing to accept Fuentes and his followers into the party, exactly as Fuentes hoped.
Today, after the news of Trump’s dinner and the thundering silence that followed it, conservative anti-Trumper Bill Kristol tweeted: “Aren’t there five decent Republicans in the House who will announce they won’t vote for anyone for Speaker who doesn’t denounce their party’s current leader, Donald Trump, for consorting with the repulsive neo-Nazi Fuentes?”
So far, at least, the answer is no.
To read footnotes, open the link.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Dining with an Extremist
When Trump dines alone
Extremist is there
In absence of phone
He’s there under hair
First read that as “Dining with Excrement
Duane, that headline works too.
Quentin Tarantino could do a kinda remake of My Dinner with Andre with this material.
Over 50 members of Congress met with members of the Azov Battalion (many of whom had to cover up their nazi tattoos). I don’t support Ye, Fuentes or Azov, but we’re not sending billion$ to arm Ye or Fuentes. The only ones still pretending Azov isn’t nazi are western liberals. Azov themselves proudly celebrate it.
The composer Robert Schumann died in a mental institution in part, according to popular lore, because he could not stop hearing one loud A-note that reverberated in his head, ultimately driving him to madness. It was all-consuming to him. He literally could not do or think of anything else. There’s a lesson here. Harping on the same note over and over again can have serious consequences for one’s mental health. It can drive one nutty, even.
Cool story. Can you actually address what I wrote? Of course you can’t, that’s why you only have insults.
Dienne,
You are fixated on the Azov group. How about Prutin’s Wagner group, mercenaries and Nazis. I haven’t seen you complain about them.
Do you have any concern about Putin’s missile barrage to destroy Ukraine’s infrastructure and kill Ukrainian citizens by depriving them of heat, water, and light during the winter? Do you feel anything when the Russians destroy a maternity hospital and kill newborns? Do you feel nothing for the millions of Ukrainians whose homes and lives are being crushed by the ego of Putin?
In your mind, the invaders are the good guys and the victims are all Nazis and deserve to die.
I truly don’t understand your thinking.
Let’s consider the sequence of events. Diane posts about a dinner in Florida. Our commentator answers with a dubious, biased claim straight out of Russian propaganda that had absolutely nothing to do with the post. And then that commentator is insulted because the bait of her attempt to change the subject and hijack the conversation was not addressed.
So the new standard is: Posit a lie in response to a question not asked and then act outraged when that fact is called out. Pathetic. Seek therapy.
Thank you, Greg. I have deleted additional Dienne comments intended to show that the Ukrainians are Nazis and the Zelenskyy’s are grifters living a life of luxury in the ruins.
Her obsessive hatred of Ukraine and her love for Putin are beyond my understanding.
D77, there’s a lesson here.
Harping on D77, over and over
again, or harping on rump
over and over again,
more or less, defines
the “tool kit” in use.
The “right” tool for
the “right” job,
used the “right” way,
is essential for
meaningful change.
The master’s tools
will never dismantle
the master’s house…
By the way, there’s no such thing as a culture war. Nazis have nothing to do with it. The Russian Ukraine War is about batteries. I highly recommend this article from the Los Angeles Daily News to elucidate everything from Ex Pres to Elon Dubya to Putin to Republican support for Putin. If it’s behind a paywall, try clearing the cookies in your browser history, and it should be available for reading. https://www.dailynews.com/2022/11/26/is-the-ukraine-war-the-first-one-for-lithium/
Also speaking of Dienne, Diane, I’m glad you took a couple days off. Hope you had a wonderful break.
Should have inserted the word to between Elon and Dubya. This iPad makes commenting difficult.
LeftCoastTeacher
That’s very interesting.
It explains a lot of stuff that seemed to make no sense.
It certainly explains Elon Musk’s recent foray into foreign affairs.
It’s always about the money with folks like Putin and Musk.
The latest is that Musk is now supporting DeSantis because , he says, he supports free speech.
This from the guy who fires anyone who speaks freely about him.
And this from the guy who throws his support behind the politician who fires or raids the house of anyone who speaks freely about him.
Ha ha ha.
Musk looks more like a clown with every passing day.
If I were a NASA administrator, I’d be very concerned that this fellow is in charge of a billion dollar rocket contract for NASA.
You might also be interested in this related article about whales and climate change from The Guardian suggesting Elon and his DLC enablers aren’t saving any planets. They’re not even trying. Elon et al want to destroy Nevada, Texas, Ukraine, and the entire Pacific Ocean to make toxic car batteries. Let whales teach how green capitalism isn’t green. It’s just capitalism.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/24/how-whales-can-help-dispel-the-myth-of-green-capitalism-adrienne-buller
Thanks for the link, LCT, even if the story is depressing.
Depressing? More like maddening. Techno fantasizing is a serious problem. Elon Musk and Bill Gates are not saviors. They are the opposite. To all the principals and superintendents in the world: You cannot buy your way to high test scores. To all the leaders of the world: You cannot make consumers buy your way to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The only way to teach, the only way to live is to reduce. Stop buying tech and invest in smaller class sizes. Stop buying tech and invest in public transportation. Stop buying tech and regulate the companies selling it. We don’t need online teaching platforms and electric vehicles. We don’t need school choice and online tests. We need books, pencils, pens, and local community schools we can walk to and from. We need buses and trains for the rest. Fools worship billionaires and blindly put faith in their costly wares.
Thank you Dienne, because as we all know, two wrongs make a right. I’ve been arguing that for years. Keep up the good work!
No one on this blog has ever acknowledged that funding and arming azov nazis is wrong.
Actually, Dienne, I don’t think it was wrong to arm Ukraine. The Ukrainian government distributed the arms. It armed the Azov battalion because the Azov group were the last holdouts in Mariupol. They were the ones holed up for weeks in the huge empty plant, defying the Russian onslaught. They were the last to give up. Their last stand in Mariupol, that doomed city of death, was heroic. When a ruthless dictator is trying to enslaved your country, you take whatever help you can get.
NOT arming people who are preventing the mass murder of innocent civilians by Putin is ALSO wrong.
I sit here and read Mark and dienne77’s faux outrage because Biden didn’t sacrifice the Ukranian people for the glory of Putin, as they wanted, and my stomach turns. Their faux outrage about Nazis has nothing to do with caring about Nazis and everything to do with defending Putin and Trump. They objected to arming ANYONE in Ukraine because Putin wanted Ukraine and that made it okay.
And they DON’T object to fascists if Putin and those who admire him in the Republican party LIKE those fascists.
Is there ANYTHING that Putin could do that would make them be critical of him?
I read their comments and they sound as angry as Father Coughlin and Charles Lindbergh attacking FDR for not letting Hitler invade as many European countries as he wants. The new version of “American First” folks who really just traffic in the same hate as the far right Republicans. They all hate the same people – Democrats, liberals, identity politics – and they profess to hate “Nazis” while actually embracing the most fascist leaders and attacking those who stand up to them for the most hypocritical reasons.
dienne77 has never acknowledged that Putin invading Ukraine was wrong.
Where have you been, NYCPSP? I missed you.
Of course you missed NYCPSP. Her infantile aggression is emblematic of this blog lately.
Dienne,
NYCPSP raised a good question, in response to your asking why no one on this blog has condemned giving arms to the Azov group.
When will you condemn Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which has wasted so many lives—Ukrainian and Russian—and leveled entire cities?
If you disappeared for weeks, I would miss you too.
First, I don’t respond to NYCPSP, because we’re not supposed to interact with each other and I honor that.
But to your point, I don’t condemn Putin because I don’t know what else I would have done in his place. He repeatedly said ukraine and Georgia joining NATO was a red line that Russia will not allow to be crossed. Obama even agreed with him on that. Yet the U.S./NATO kept leading ukraine down the garden path bringing them more and more into NATO (while, of course, withholding any real benefit to ukraine). The U.S./NATO kept building up troops on Russia’s border. They kept importing weapons, including nuclear weapons, closer and closer to Moscow. Do you think Putin should have just turned a blind eye to that and let it happen? Do you think the U.S. would if the tables were turned? He very patiently tried diplomacy for a very long time (as you yourself point out, he’s been in power for over 20 years, yet he didn’t invade until this year – why do you think that is if he’s such a blood-thirsty, land-grabbing, maniacal tyrant?).
Furthermore, the ultranationalist ukrainian nazis that were well documented prior to 2022 which you refuse to acknowledge, were building up toward a massive offensive in eastern ukraine that would have left thousands of ethnic Russians dead. Again, do you think Putin should have just allowed that? Would the U.S. in his place? And also again, he tried diplomacy. The U.S., the EU and ukraine all agreed to the Minsk Accords, but ukraine and the U.S. immediately backed out and refused to enforce them. The ensuing civil war killed over 14,000, most of them ethnic Russians.
I’m sorry, but when you poke the bear, eventually you have to be ready to fight the bear. The school bully who constantly taunts other kids can’t cry when one of those other kids eventually belts him in the nose. Or, well, he can, but it doesn’t make him right. The fact is that the U.S./NATO, not Russia, has been the bully every since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. If you would read even a fraction of the sources I post, you’d see that. But it’s all “Russian propaganda”, isn’t it? Must be nice to live in an unfalsifiable world.
Speaking of, I have previously made an offer which remains open. The late Stephen F. Cohen – husband of The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel – wrote a book called “War With Russia?” I will pay for a copy of that book for anyone on this blog who is interested. I’d prefer to go through my local independent bookstore, but that would require giving me an address to send it to, and I understand people might not be comfortable with that. So if you’d rather, I can go through Amazon and have it sent to the Amazon locker of your choice. If you read that book in good faith, I’m happy to debate it with you. But your continued insistence on denying documented reality is akin to MAGA-level cultism. Let me know if anyone is interested.
So, now that I’ve justified my reasons for not condemning Putin, can anyone justify their reasons for not condemning literal nazis?
I do not accept your rationale for the stupid, pointless, vicious war that Putin unleashed on his neighbor. He assumed that since the West did not respond when he bit off pieces of Ukraine in 2008, he would march in, decapitate the elected government and seize the whole country. Another step towards his fevered dream of recreating the USSR. Remember, he said that the collapse of the USSR was “the greatest geopolitical tragedy” of the 29th century.
But Zelenskyy did not flee.
The people of Ukraine determined not to bend to tyranny.
Tens of thousands of people have died, many more wounded, and all you care about is Putin’s wounded ego.
Sad.
“I don’t condemn Putin because I don’t know what else I would have done in his place.”
Our commentator believes more that 200,000 deaths, untold destruction, immeasurable human suffering, and generations of hate and recrimination are worth throwing a temper tantrum over public policy. This from the same person who cannot get past decades-old wars and brings them up at every turn when convenient for her warped arguments. Can someone please explain this sociopathic logic to me? Is there a chart correlating the numbers with specific policy decisions? How many lives is an energy policy worth? More or less than health policy? Sick and pathetic.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63580372
Thanks, Diane! I have still been reading your wonderful blog regularly and I didn’t even realize I hadn’t been posting very often. Your enlightening posts and the often informative replies from many of the regulars here are something I always look forward to reading.
I know I shouldn’t be, but I get provoked when I read comments like this normalizing Putin’s worst atrocities:
“I don’t condemn Putin because I don’t know what else I would have done in his place.”
Remember, this came from the SAME person who implied we were all brainwashed by the western media to be concerned about Putin’s military build up on the Ukraine border when Putin had no plans to invade Ukraine. Then she claimed Putin was just fighting Ukraine Nazis. Now she is saying that she UNDERSTANDS why Putin would want to annihilate Ukraine families — because Putin is supposedly terrified of the same NATO that did nothing when he invaded Crimea. This person might have bombed the heck out of Ukraine herself if she had the chance — she just doesn’t know what else she would have done!
This rationale might be more believable if it didn’t come from a person who aggressively attacks leaders of real democracies whose political opponents don’t keep winding up dead. Who doesn’t talk about them being warmongering baby bombing murderers, except when those baby bombers are Putin and they just don’t know what else they would have done in his place.
I also believe that Stephen Cohen – who died 18 months before Putin invaded Ukraine – would be turning over in his grave to see the folks who are excusing Putin’s most violent and extreme attacks on Ukraine citing him to justify their NON-CONDEMNATION of what Putin has done. Even Katrina vanden Heuvel is able to condemn Putin and has a far more nuanced perspective than those who still believe that murderous attacks on Ukraine civilians are justified.
I repeat, Is there ANYTHING that Putin has done or would do that would make them criticize Putin? The more Putin escalates, the more their scapegoating others for Putin’s crimes starts to feel off.
Just when you think that Trump can’t sink any lower and be more depraved than he already is, then we have him cavorting with blatant anti-semites and Nazi scum. And there are people out there who still think he’s the greatest thing since Tang? The only benefit of Trump is that he has caused so much dissension and in-fighting in the GOP. The GOP should die a short and very painful death. Some of the clowns who once supported Trump are now condemning him. It was always obvious from day 1 that Trump was/is a horrible excuse for a human being and should have never been within 10,000 miles of the nuclear codes or the White House.
That’s on my holiday wish list, in fighting so severe in the GOP that the vile factions cancel each other out.
Was Traitor Trump plotting a 2nd violent coup with this known racist, to gather the extreme right militias for another go at our government maybe on Christmas day or New Year’s Day?
I am less than interested in Trump and his dinner associates than many, but I do think that a political figure has dinner with someone without a public purpose. In this case, it would appear that Donnie wants to use his meal to push the GOP farther to the right.
Remember how President Ex shakes people’s hands. He yanks them and tries to pull people off balance. It’s a power thing. He’s trying to assert his dominance. When he has dinner with people, he’s just yanking them off balance. It’s what Ex does.
Trump is exerting his dumbinance.
Fixed.
The Trump administration was a perfect example of a “dumbinance hierarchy.” (Or maybe it’s a dumpster “firearchy” )
David Duke redux. Good luck with that Russia RepubliQans! Your racist anti-democracy hate cult is cratering and even Hunter Biden’s laptop can’t save you! And btw, everyone realizes the Secret Service vets anyone and everyone within reach of the Putin puppet so the feigned ignorance of Fuentes is disingenuous at best. Just pathetic. What a loser.
He would not be having dinner with Nazis and White Nationalists if he was where he belongs, locked up in the general population of a Federal Prison .
“Heck of a job Merrick”
They do have visiting hours and, I presume, vending machines. If they have the Japanese kind, they could have had a feast. Plus, having seen Breaking Bad, I believe am now an expert on prisons. According to those sources, Nazis and white nationalists don’t have much of a problem meeting in prisons. Some likely consider it their spa time.
Trump claims he didn’t know who Nick Fuentes is (rabid white nationalist, anti-Semite, Holocaust denier, etc.). Can any total stranger get an audience or a meal with Trump without being screened? Trump liked him because he likes Trump. Flattery will get you everywhere if it’s Trump.
Media reported that the Heritage Foundation was scheduled to spend in excess of $1 mil. on nationally broadcasted ads over the past weekend that critics describe as anti-LGBTQ.
Nick Fuentes’ multiple targets of hate are listed at the site of the Anti-Defamation League. Those are the same prejudices promulgated, over a long history, by a politically prominent conservative Christian church. (Wikipedia lists Fuentes’ religious sect. ) The identified church has succeeded in the past two years in forcing pregnancies on women and in exempting its schools from civil rights employment law. Further threats to democracy loom in the conservative church’s SCOTUS.
Fuentes’ skill is in whipping up the fervor of a crowd and in growing fringe groups of haters.
Since 2021, Heritage has been led by a man who was was formerly President of Wyoming Catholic College. During his tenure, WCC rejected federal funds for the same reason that Hillsdale did. Prior to presidency of WCC, he founded the K-12 John Paul the Great Academy in Texas and he led the right wing Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Wyoming Catholic College (190 students) was founded in 2007 and is the only private 4-year institution of higher learning in the state. The school has a Board of Directors of 11 men (race in the photo array appears to be White). The array includes a photo of a “secretary” (female). WCC uses the Classic Learning Test ( may be an alternative to SAT and ACT) which has 200 other college users, mostly evangelical and Catholic schools. The test also draws support from homeschoolers according to Wikipedia.
Based on the site’s photo array, WCC has 20 faculty members. The array appears to show 17 faculty with demographics similar to the Board. The faculty representative to the board has 8 children who he and his wife homeschool. The highest ranking among the 3 female faculty members shares the same name and approximate age as the school’s president. The 3rd ranking female is an interim director of a program and is an equestrian instructor.
After listening to Rachel Maddow’s pod cast “Ultra” about the failed sedition trials of Nazi sympathizers during World War II, I don’t think American Nazi’s are so “Neo.” It is part of the political perspective that led to our Civil War, Jim Crow, and the 21st Century GOP.
One oft forgotten fact is that Joe McCarthy made his first splash on the national stage by defending the German soldiers who committed war crimes against Allied soldiers at Malmedy. He claimed, much like the Jan 6 defenders do, that they were being prosecuted too aggressively. And that increased his fan base! Just underscores your point that what we think is neo has likely been going on for eon(s).