CLAIM: Former President Donald Trump has never condemned white supremacist Nick Fuentes, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl said Sunday.
Verdict: False. Trump specifically and unambiguously criticized Fuentes in 2022.
Sen. Jonathan Karl on Sunday questioned Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), President Trump’s running mate, about a dinner that President Trump hosted at Mar-a-Lago in Florida in November 2022.
It’s official! From ABC and @CBS On Sunday’s show, questions will be asked one after another from the Kamala Harris camp and the Democratic Party!
MSM, try harder. At least try to cover it up next time!
“Tweaked? ABC, CBS Ask Vance Same Weird White Supremacist Questions” https://t.co/uIualuvFKt
— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) August 11, 2024
Video: John Karl goes from sympathy for the racist hatred directed at Usha Vance to a smear-by-association question about Nick Fuentes’s intrusion into Trump and Kanye’s dinner at Mar-a-Lago, a question framed to suggest racial betrayal (by proxy). pic.twitter.com/55IYQiPETH
— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) August 11, 2024
Kanye West, who was just beginning to reveal the depths of his anti-Semitic views, was in attendance, and he brought along Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who was little known outside the dark corners of the internet (he had been banned from many platforms) and was unknown to Trump at the time.
Vance said“President Trump has made multiple accusations about this,” Karl responded, “but not about Fuentes.”
That is plainly wrong.
As Breitbart News’ Matt Boyle reported in December 2022, Trump said Fuentes and those who share his views have no place in either the “America First” movement or the Republican Party.
To quote from Boyle’s interview:
At the beginning of the interview, Breitbart News asked Fuentes whether, as a party and movement leader, there was any room for his views within the Republican Party and the America First movement.
“No, I’m not,” Trump replied emphatically.
…
Trump spoke at length about the incident for the first time since it occurred in an interview with Breitbart News, in which he clarified that he was unaware of West’s own recent string of anti-Semitic comments until after the dinner, and criticized the media for its coverage of the dinner, saying it “should not have been made into a big fuss.”
“Very importantly, I didn’t know him. [Fuentes] “I knew Kanye. Kanye was very kind to me, very respectful. Kanye went on Tucker Carlson and said Trump was the best guy. I was the only person he mentioned. So Kanye called me and said he needed help and advice. I agreed. He brought a group of people, one of them being this guy. How am I supposed to know Kanye’s worldview? I haven’t done any research on Kanye. I haven’t done any research on how he thinks about certain races or certain religions or anything like that. I think it was a very good meeting in terms of we discussed a lot of things, but this It wasn’t discussed. It wasn’t even a topic or a red flag. I didn’t hear about it until a day or two later that he had made some very negative anti-Semitic remarks. But during that dinner, he didn’t say anything negative about anti-Semitism. The dinner was quick. The dinner was over quickly, they left. And then I found out who the other person was. There were a few others. One was a real estate agent, the other was a politician that everybody knew, well-known, well-respected. The Fake News Media made a big fuss about something, but they shouldn’t have done that.”
When asked again whether he meant that Fuentes’ views – and those of anyone else who espouses anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial or racism – have no place in the America First movement or the Republican Party, Trump made it clear that they have no place.
“No, that’s not the case. No one has any ill will or ill will towards anybody,” Trump said. “We don’t want any ill will. But again, it was very unfairly reported. It was very, very unfairly reported.”
