Former President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday night had dinner with Nick Fuentes, an outspoken anti-Semite and racist who is one of the country’s most prominent young white supremacists, at Mr. Trump’s private club in Florida, advisers to Mr. Trump conceded on Friday.
Also at the dinner was the performer Kanye West, who has also been condemned for making anti-Semitic statements. Mr. West traveled to meet with Mr. Trump at the club, Mar-a-Lago, and brought Mr. Fuentes along, the advisers said.
The fourth attendee at the four-person dinner, Karen Giorno — a veteran political operative who worked on Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign as his state director in Florida — also confirmed that Mr. Fuentes was there. Attempts to reach Mr. Fuentes through an intermediary on Friday were unsuccessful.
In recent years, Mr. Fuentes, 24, has developed a high profile on the far right and forged ties with such Republican lawmakers as Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, largely through his leadership of an annual white-supremacist event called the America First Political Action Conference. A Holocaust denier and unabashed racist, Mr. Fuentes openly uses hateful language on his podcast, in recent weeks calling for the military to be sent into Black neighborhoods and demanding that Jews leave the country.
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Former President Donald Trump hosted white nationalist and anti-Semite Nick Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach on Tuesday night, according to multiple people familiar with the event.
Fuentes, who frequently posts racist content in addition to Holocaust revisionism, was brought as a guest of rapper Kanye West, who now goes by Ye.
In a post to his social media site, Trump confirmed the gathering.
“This past week, Kanye West called me to have dinner at Mar-a-Lago,” he wrote. “Shortly thereafter, he unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about. We had dinner on Tuesday evening with many members present on the back patio. The dinner was quick and uneventful. They then left for the airport.”
However eventful, the dinner reflects a remarkable moment in an extremely early 2024 campaign cycle: the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination breaking bread with a man who frequently posts racist content and Holocaust revisionism, brought there by a rapper who is launching his own presidential campaign under the shadow of his own anti-Semitic remarks.
“If it was any other party, breaking bread with Nick Fuentes would be instantly disqualifying for Trump,” said Democratic National Committee spokesperson Ammar Moussa. “The most extreme views have found a home in today’s MAGA Republican party.”