GOP Senator Catches Heat Over 'Pathetic' Excuse For Trump's Nick Fuentes Meeting
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) caught flak online Monday after he tried to blame Donald Trump’s staff for allowing the former president to host a high-profile white supremacist for dinner.
Trump admitted over the weekend that he dined at Mar-a-Lago last week with far-right provocateur Nick Fuentes and Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West. Trump claimed he had no idea who Fuentes was and that Ye brought him to his Florida estate as a guest.
“If the reports are true and the president didn’t know who [Fuentes] was, whoever let him in the room should be fired,” Tillis said, according to NBC senior national political reporter Sahil Kapur.
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis on Trump dining with Fuentes: “If the reports are true and the president didn't know who he was, whoever let him in the room should be fired.”
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 28, 2022
The dinner attracted heated backlash and condemnation from Democrats, civil rights groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and even from a number of Trump’s Republican allies in Congress.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), for example, said, “There’s no room in the Republican Party for white supremacists and antisemitism, so it’s wrong.” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) called Ye “disturbed” and Fuentes “evil” and said that Trump should not have met with Fuentes because it legitimized the white supremacist.
Fuentes has vocally embraced racist and antisemitic views and was at the violent “Unite the Right” neo-Nazi rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Ye’s professional empire is in jeopardy after he made a series of disturbing antisemitic comments earlier this year.
According to sources cited by Axios and The New York Times, Trump praised Fuentes during the meeting and said, “He gets me.”
Tillis’ excuse didn’t fly with Twitter users, though some agreed with him that the person responsible should be fired:
What a pathetic answer https://t.co/krPFRzlw2M
— PoliticsVerse 🇺🇸 (@PoliticsVerse) November 29, 2022
You can make the "Trump has weak staffing" argument to a point, but Trump has known who Fuentes was now for at least six days. Why has there been no denunciation of him and his views? https://t.co/H97A6OMvYx
— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) November 29, 2022
and since Trump let him in the room of the club he owns as Kanye’s +1, then…guess Sen. Tillis thinks Trump should be fired again https://t.co/eGkeKn8dFX
— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) November 28, 2022
Familiar from Russian history: The tsar can never be wrong. It's all the fault of bad advisers. https://t.co/TOIwLZ9a9l
— Max Boot 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@MaxBoot) November 28, 2022
The person who let him in was the former president https://t.co/65SvW3UQuB
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 29, 2022
This is always the theme, from executive orders in 2017 to Jan. 6: that staff is somehow failing Trump or to blame. Some staff tried stopping him from meeting with West. He wanted to do it.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 29, 2022
Trump let him in. Fire him @SenThomTillishttps://t.co/hxvReVjOi5
— Outspoken™️ (@Out5p0ken) November 29, 2022
They’re pleading w Trump to throw someone under the bus so they can avoid criticizing him
But you don’t usually fire people involved in your criminal conspiracies. https://t.co/N2JfkqqGUC— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) November 28, 2022
yep - Trump knew who it was. He is supposed to be a bigly micro-manager, so he no doubt knew exactly who it was.
— Jeff never needed a special master (@NewJeffCT) November 29, 2022
Narrator: it isn’t a staffing issue https://t.co/UfnqIJXHX8
— Brandon Richards (@BrandonRichards) November 29, 2022
He knows exactly who his base likes and why.
He also knows meeting with Fuentes is over the line. He just thinks he can say, "I don't know him" and that'll take care of everything -- like he did with David Duke and the Proud Boys. https://t.co/EDAT3pabyd— Nicolas Falacci (@NickFalacci) November 29, 2022