Former President Donald Trump reportedly had dinner Tuesday with Kanye West, known as Ye, and white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
Trump’s reported meeting with Ye and Fuentes, which comes a week after he announced his candidacy for a second term as president, may ignite fresh outrage from some, according to Axios. Trump allegedly knew nothing about Feuntes, who is considered a white supremacist by the Department of Justice (DOJ), saying in a statement that Ye “arrived with a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about,” Axios reported.
Reports purportedly circulated saying Fuentes was seen at Mar-a-Lago alongside Ye, but that he did not have dinner with Trump and the rapper, according to Axios.
Ye said in a video posted to Twitter that he asked Trump to be his presidential running mate in 2024 while at Mar-a-Lago. He claimed Trump essentially screamed at him following the proposition. “I think the thing that Trump was most perturbed about me asking him to be my vice president … When Trump started basically screaming at me at the table, telling me I was going to lose — I mean, has that ever worked for anyone in history? I’m like hold on Trump, you’re talking to Ye,” Ye said in the video.
The dinner comes after a wave of anti-Semitic comments from the rapper, costing him millions of dollars’ worth of endorsement deals, according to Politico. (RELATED: LA Officials Condemn Supporters Of Kanye West’s Anti-Semitic Speech)
#YE24 pic.twitter.com/DyIhMU5By6
— ye (@kanyewest) November 25, 2022
Fuentes allegedly told Trump he thought the former president appeared scripted during his campaign announcement earlier in November, and that he would rather Trump be “authentic,” Axios reported, citing sources familiar with the dinner. Fuentes was also present at the “Unite the Right” rally in 2017 in Charlottesville, and criticized Trump for disavowing white supremacy, according to Politico. Fuentes’ profiles were removed from YouTube and various social media outlets, Politico reported.