The White House condemns Trump's meeting with a supporter of "white supremacy"
Trump said he did not know Fuentes before the meeting.
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The White House condemned former President Donald Trump's meeting in Florida with Nick Fuentes, a known white supremacist, and rapper Kanye West, whose comments deemed anti-Semitic sparked a wave of condemnation.
Trump had announced that he had dinner with the rapper at his residence in Florida, noting that the latter had brought some of his friends, including Nick Fuentes, who is known for his racist and anti-Semitic views.
"I had no knowledge of Nick Fuentes," Trump said in a comment posted on his account on the "Truth Social" platform.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates condemned the meeting between Trump and Fuentes.
"There is no place for bigotry, hatred and anti-Semitism in America," Bates told CNN. "Holocaust denial is abhorrent and dangerous and must be strongly condemned."
Commenting on a question about the dinner organized by Trump, US President Joe Biden, who is spending the weekend in Nantucket, simply said: "You don't want to hear my opinion."
Fuentes is a Holocaust denier whose YouTube channel was deleted in early 2020 for violating the platform's policy on hate speech.
In mid-November, Trump announced that he intends to run for the presidential elections scheduled for 2024, but hosting him as a white nationalist called for censured reactions from some of his former administration officials.
The former US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, denounced the dinner, and said in a tweet: “Even a social visit from anti-Semites like Kanye West and Nick Fuentes is unacceptable.” He continued, “Anti-Semites deserve no space among American leaders of the right or left.”
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