I’m sure that by now you’ve heard about the white supremacist dinner party that Donald Trump hosted at his Mar-A-Lago resort on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. His guests included Kanye West (now known as “Ye”… um, okay) and 24 year old anti-Semite Nick Fuentes. “Ye” has been publicly unraveling for weeks now, spouting bigoted nonsense about “the Jews” and tweeting that he was going to go “Death con five” on them. The result of his lunacy has been the cancellation of literally billions of dollars in endorsements and business deals. You almost feel sorry for him because he is clearly mentally ill. Almost.
Nick Fuentes is a name that I personally had not heard of prior to this turkey and cranberry sauce supper hosted at the home of a former leader of the free world. He’s only 24 but he has racked up quite a record of anti-Jewish hatred. Fuentes has officially been named as a White Supremacist by the U.S. Justice Department. He was at the infamous Charlottesville rally marching along with the rest of the tiki torch wielding zealots chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” He has denied the veracity of the Holocaust. He has compared the murders of Jews in the Nazis’ ovens to “baking cookies.” He thinks Jim Crow was a good thing and has publicly mocked those who think that it was unjust to send African Americans to separate schools and make them drink from different water fountains and use separate public restroom facilities. He thinks that interracial marriage is “an abomination.” How does a 24-year-old get filled with that much hate? More importantly, what the hell is he doing dining at the home of a former United States President?
I know. I know. It’s Trump. Why should anyone be surprised? For his part, Trump claims he didn’t know who Fuentes was, which is preposterous. Even the mayor of a small town vets the people he or she is dining with prior to the meal to avoid the potential appearance of any conflict of interest. Plus, even though he’s nuts, Kanye’s statements have been all over the news and social media for weeks. Trump knew who and what that man was, and he clearly knew who the guest who accompanied him to that dinner was.
While a select few Republicans, including Speaker-in-Waiting Kevin McCarthy, have denounced anti-Semitism and the dinner, they are careful to do so without denouncing the man who HOSTED the dinner. Just as Trump won’t denounce Fuentes directly. The reason is simple. Racism, bigotry, white grievance and anti-Semitism are now an integral part of the GOP brand. The “deplorables,” as Hillary Clinton once called them, form the base of the party. No Republican wants to say anything that will alienate the bigots. For the rationalists out there who want to claim that Trump and his base are not racists and white nationalists, I suggest that they look at the official newspaper of the Ku Klux Klan. Trump is the only presidential candidate to ever be formally endorsed by the KKK. And they did it twice.
I will say that at least the red hat-wearing bigots are honest. They show you exactly who and what they are. The ones I can’t stomach are those who support the MAGA movement yet swear up and down that there isn’t a bigoted bone in their bodies. They support Trump and his band of crazies because of taxes or the economy or the immigration crisis. They say they “don’t pay attention” to the bigoted rhetoric. That’s “just talk.” They simply “ignore it” and focus on the issues that they feel are really important.
What they are saying in actuality is that racial and ethnic hatred aren’t dealbreakers for them. That I really find deplorable.