I’m usually requested to call my dream banquet visitor checklist, and that’s a comparatively simple query.
I’d have Elon Musk, Tiger Woods, Ricky Gervais, Sharon Osbourne, Pope Francis, Beyonce, Howard Stern, Malala Yousafzai, Cristiano Ronaldo and Dame Joan Collins.
The right mixture of brains, expertise, humor, braveness, religion and glamour.
A more durable query can be my banquet visitor checklist from hell.
However it could in all probability embody Donald Trump and Kanye ‘Ye’ West, if solely as a result of they’d by no means cease speaking over different company and would continuously offend everybody by saying intentionally crass, inflammatory issues.
And it could most undoubtedly embody Nick Fuentes, a repellent, hateful, anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying, racist, misogynist, homophobic, white supremacist self-identified incel who praises Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Putin, helps the Taliban, advocates assaulting ladies who “get out of line,” says the civil rights motion was a mistake, and who, simply two days earlier than the Jan. 6 riots on the Capitol, publicly steered killing stage legislators who have been unwilling to overturn the outcomes of the 2020 election.
He additionally known as the lethal assault on democracy “superior” and “refreshing.”
Fuentes is a infamous particular person who revels in his headline-grabbing notoriety, and should you transfer in any type of political/media circles, you’d need to be sitting in a big crater on the Moon not to pay attention to him and his disgusting views which have triggered him to be banned from most social media platforms, and cost processors like PayPal, and received him positioned on a federal no-fly checklist.
But final Tuesday night time, President Trump hosted a pre-Thanksgiving dinner at his Mar-a-Lago dwelling in Palm Seaside for Fuentes — and West.
It was dangerous sufficient that he invited West after all of the controversy over the rapper’s repeated anti-Semitic outbursts in latest weeks.
For a former US president who claims to be “Israel’s finest good friend,” and who earlier this month accepted an award from America’s oldest pro-Zionist group for his “achievements on behalf of Israel and world Jewry” to be cozying as much as a person who stated he was going “Dying con 3 on Jewish Individuals” is shockingly tone-deaf.
However for Trump to even be chowing Turkey and apple pie with one of many world’s most despicable anti-Semites, somebody who in contrast Jews burnt in focus camps to cookies in an oven, is past shameful.
The Zionist Group of America that introduced him with their highest award, the Theodor Herzl Medallion, issued a press release saying, “ZOA deplores the truth that President Trump had a pleasant dinner with such vile antisemites. His eating with Jew-haters helps legitimize and mainstream antisemitism and should be condemned by everybody.”
It was so dangerous, it even horrified Republicans.
“That is simply terrible, unacceptable conduct from anybody, however most notably from a former President and present candidate,” tweeted one other potential 2024 Republican candidate, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Sure, it’s.
And what made it even worse, as so usually with Trump, was his pathetic try and fake he had no concept who Fuentes is.
“Kanye West very a lot needed to go to Mar-a-Lago,” he stated in one in all varied statements he’s put out desperately attempting to guard himself from the mounting outrage over the meal. “Our dinner assembly was meant to be Kanye and me solely, however he arrived with a visitor whom I had by no means met and knew nothing about.”
Oh please.
Trump is guarded by a big Secret Service element at Mar-a-Lago.
And I understand how thorough they’re about anybody who visits him, as a result of in April this 12 months, I interviewed Trump there and my entire crew was subjected to detailed checks earlier than they arrived.
The brokers may have rapidly labored out precisely who Fuentes is, and his background, and briefed President Trump.
It’s actually one Google search.
Simply as Trump is aware of full effectively that West has been spewing horrible anti-Semitic claptrap for months, costing the singer big contracts with companies like Adidas.
But he nonetheless went forward with the dinner, throughout which, in response to Axios who broke the story, there was a “lot of fawning backwards and forwards.”
At one level, Trump reportedly turned to West and stated of Fuentes, “I actually like this man. He will get me.”
Fuentes even boasted of being de-platformed from Gettr, the social platform launched by Trump adviser and shut good friend, Jason Miller.
When Trump requested whether or not it was as a result of Fuentes was on the “fringe” of his supporter base, Fuentes replied that he was.
Even this gigantic crimson flag didn’t make Trump rise up and go away.
West, who stated Trump started “screaming” at him when he introduced he too was operating for president and needed him to his operating mate, posted a video after the dinner saying his host was “actually impressed” with Fuentes.
After all, he was.
Trump is interested in sycophancy like a ravenous bee to a pot of honey.
He’ll ignore somebody’s background, nevertheless appalling, as long as they are saying good issues about him.
That’s an Achilles heel for anybody.
For somebody operating for president, it’s a catastrophe.
“To my good friend Donald Trump, you’re higher than this,” tweeted David Friedman, who served as Trump’s US Ambassador to Israel.
However he’s not.
Repeatedly, from his “very advantageous individuals, on either side” remark defending the Charlottesville white nationalist protestors, to him bigging up vile dictators like Putin and Kim Jong-un, Trump’s proven a repeated and disturbing tendency to embrace the worst, most bigoted individuals on the earth.
That’s why his dinner with Nick Fuentes isn’t actually that stunning.
Trump loved him blowing smoke up his needy bottom, and that’s all he cares about.
At the same time as he raced to distance his guilty-as-sin carcass from the scandal, he couldn’t convey himself to denounce Fuentes.
Although he did discover time to denounce West as a “severely troubled man, who simply occurs to be black.”
This dinner ought to be a large wake-up name for these within the GOP nonetheless weirdly in thrall to a severely tarnished ex-leader who will fortunately sup with the anti-Semitic satan in the event that they inform him they love him.
Trump, not that we wanted a lot of a reminder, won’t ever change.
However the Republican Occasion should, and transfer on from him quick, or it would lose in 2024.
