Kanye Is A ‘Seriously Troubled Man, Who Just Happens To Be Black,’ Trump Responds To Backlash Over Controversial Dinner
Following widespread criticism, presidential candidate Donald Trump is trying to explain why he had dinner with a known white supremacist and his longtime supporter Kanye West, who’s engulfed in his own antisemitic controversy.
"So I help a seriously troubled man, who just happens to be black, Ye (Kanye West), who has been decimated in his business and virtually everything else, and who has always been good to me, by allowing his request for a meeting at Mar-a-Lago, alone, so that I can give him very much needed ‘advice’," Trump posted Saturday (Nov. 26) to his Truth Social account, according to Fox News.
The former president claimed that West showed up to dinner Tuesday night (Nov. 22) with two people he didn’t know. Axios reported that one of them was Nick Fuentes, whom the Justice Departmen has labeled a white supremacist.
According to CBS News, Fuentes is a leader in the far-right movement who attended the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville and the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6. The Anti-Defamation League has identified him as a Holocaust denier who routinely makes antisemitic remarks.
West faces his own troubles stemming from antisemitic comments on social media after wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt at Paris Fashion Week in October. He has lost corporate partnership for his clothing line from Adidas, Gap, and Balenciaga.
Jewish leaders, including Trump’s Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, criticized the former president’s choice of dinner company.
Trump said he gave West, who ran for president in 2020, some political advice at dinner: “I told him don’t run for office, a total waste of time, can’t win.”
The Hill reported that West asked Trump at the Mar-a-Lago meeting to be his running mate in 2024. West said Trump yelled at him.
“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,” West said in a video. “I’m like hold on, hold on, hold on, Trump, you’re talking to Ye.”
