Jewish American groups demand Trump condemn antisemitic dinner guests

WASHINGTON

A growing number of Jewish American groups urging former US President Donald Trump to denounce two antisemites he hosted at his Mar-a-Lago estate for a dinner that has drawn widespread condemnation.

Trump on Nov. 22 hosted Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West who has made openly antisemitic statements on social media, including threatening "death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE" in a tweet that prompted the suspension of his account, an action reversed by Twitter CEO Elon Musk.

Trump also hosted Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier and vocal antisemite, at last week's dinner. Trump has since said he did not know who Fuentes was at the time of their meeting, but did not repudiate him.

The dinner was "awful, appalling and yet entirely in character" for Trump, said Jonathan Greenblatt, the president of the Anti-Defamation League, an NGO focused on combatting anti-Semitism.

"If anyone still had any doubts about Donald Trump's embrace of bigotry and division, it's certainly clarifying to see him spend time openly and unapologetically with notorious antisemites Nick Fuentes and Kanye West," he wrote on Twitter.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights group, said Trump's sit-down with Ye and Fuentes "would be similar to a meeting of the President of the United States with leaders of the KKK," a reference to the Ku Klux Klan, a notorious white supremacist group.

“It is unacceptable that a former President of the United States who has announced his candidacy for a second term would meet with antisemites and an avowed white nationalist. The result of this meeting is the mainstreaming of bigotry at a time of surging antisemitism in the United States,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the council's director for global social action.

The criticism has also come from Trump's former senior officials.

Elan Carr, the ex-president's special envoy to combat antisemitism, implored Trump to "condemn these dangerous men and their disgusting and un-American views."

"No responsible American, and certainly no former President, should be cavorting with the likes of Nick Fuentes and Kanye West. To placate antisemitism is to promote antisemitism," he wrote on Twitter.