CNN –
Former Vice President Mike Pence said Monday that Donald Trump was “wrong” to recently dine with white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and rapper Kanye West at his Florida resort and that the former president should apologize for that.
“President Trump was wrong to give a seat at the table to a white nationalist, an anti-Semite, and a Holocaust denier, and I think he should apologize for that. And he should denounce these people and their rhetoric hateful without qualification,” Pence told NewsNation in a clip released Monday night.
Trump “demonstrated profoundly poor judgment in giving these people a seat at the table,” he said, adding that he does not believe Trump is “racist or bigoted.”
Trump faced swift backlash from members of his own party after hosting Fuentes and West at his Mar-a-Lago estate last Tuesday. The meeting came a week after the former president announced he would seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
Pence, who has also been seen as a potential 2024 Republican nominee, has spoken highly of Trump’s policies and his time in his administration, but has broken with the former president over his handling of the attack from January 6, 2021 in the USA. capitol He told CNN at a November town hall that Trump’s words and tweet on Jan. 6 “were reckless” and that he believes there will be “better options” in 2024 than Trump.
Pence’s comments join a chorus of intense criticism directed at Trump in recent days.
Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson called Sunday’s meeting with the two figures “very troubling” and “empowering” for extremism.
“No, I don’t think it’s a good idea for a leader who is setting an example for the country or the party to meet (an) avowed racist or anti-Semite. And so it’s very troubling and it shouldn’t happen and we have to avoid that kind of empowerment at the extremes,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” “You want to diminish their strength, you don’t empower them Stay away.”
Hutchinson, who is term-limited and will step down in January, is currently mulling a 2024 White House bid.
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, reacting to news of the meeting, told CNN on Monday that Fuentes “is a purveyor and a spreader of evil, poison,” adding of West, “I don’t know him, but the boy’s boy. he has some problems.”
Asked if Trump should convict Fuentes, Rubio said: “I hope he does. Because I know he’s not anti-Semitic. I can tell you that it’s true that Trump is not but this guy (Fuentes) is bad. And this guy is just a nasty, disgusting person. He’s an ass clown.”
Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah fiercely condemned Trump’s hosting of the group.
“You know, I think it’s disgusting to invite people like that to meet with a former president of the United States. I think there is, it’s clear that there is no bottom line to the degree to which President Trump will degrade himself and the nation,” Romney said.
Asked if Trump should apologize, Romney said: “He doesn’t. He never sees anything wrong with anything he does, so that’s typical of his approach, which is to say it was a joke or say that he didn’t know what was going on. But that doesn’t fly, obviously. That’s something that degrades him frankly, to do what he’s done. And it’s something that undermines the country as well. It’s very unfortunate.”
CNN previously reported that Trump engaged with Fuentes and found him “very interesting” during the dinner, according to a source familiar with him, particularly Fuentes’ ability to play down statistics and data, and his familiarity with Trump’s world. At one point during the dinner, Trump declared that he “liked” Fuentes.
Fuentes has been identified as a white supremacist by the Anti-Defamation League and has been banned from most major social media platforms for his white nationalist rhetoric. Fuentes was present on the grounds of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 and has promoted Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of fraud in the 2020 election. West became embroiled in his own controversy after repeating conspiracy theories anti-Semitic and making other offensive statements last month.
Trump acknowledged the dinner in a post on Truth Social on Friday, writing: “Last week, Kanye West called me to dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Shortly after, he showed up unexpectedly with three of his friends, who I didn’t know about nothing. We had dinner on Tuesday evening with many members present in the back yard. Dinner was quick and uneventful. Then they left for the airport.”
Trump repeated later Friday that he “didn’t know” Fuentes and that he had offered West business and political advice.