After years of false charges and conspiracy theories such as the Russia collusion hoax advanced by his partisan foes, former President Donald Trump's supporters have stopped listening to his myriad critics. The accusations and attempts to criminalize his behavior and actions—such as Attorney General Merrick Garland's decision earlier this month to name a special prosecutor to investigate charges against him related to the January 6 Capitol riot and the dispute over his retention of classified documents at his Florida home—fall on deaf ears on the Right.
Trump's fans and even those conservatives who have reservations about him understand that the corporate media is hopelessly biased against him, and that he is always held to a standard never applied to Democrats.
Yet the cynicism built up by years of untrustworthy coverage of Trump has also had a flip side: It helped create a situation where it was always going to be difficult for Republicans to accept when Trump actually does something that ought to trouble them.
Such an instance occurred last week, when the former president hosted rapper/fashion mogul Kanye West and online personality Nick Fuentes at a dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump is familiar with West (who now calls himself "Ye") and had previously hosted him in the White House. He claims he had no idea who Fuentes was.
But even if the latter is true, the idea that a person who declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president in 2024 only the week before would have a public meeting with someone like Ye, let alone a well-known Holocaust denier like Fuentes, isn't just a gift to Trump's detractors. It's a blow to the solar plexus for those who have spent the last several years defending Trump against spurious charges of antisemitism.
Ye has, after all, spent the last few weeks as a subject of controversy about his constant spewing of antisemitic bile. While Fox News' Tucker Carlson gave him two hours of prime time, he had to edit out from the show several Ye tirades drenched in Jew-hatred in order to put forward the dubious argument that a man diagnosed with bipolar disorder is a sane voice worth listening to.
The celebrity then compounded that by going on Twitter to threaten Jews in comments that conservative pundit Ben Shapiro denounced as "Der Sturmer-type antisemitism."
Even worse was the presence at Mar-a-Lago of Fuentes, an avowed white supremacist and the putative leader of the so-called "Groypers," a group of far-right trolls who are allied with neo-Nazis and specialize in Holocaust denial and other forms of vicious Jew-hatred.
In 2019, Fuentes was the focus of his own controversy, when many conservatives cut ties with columnist Michelle Malkin for her willingness to defend this Holocaust denier and his loathsome followers who have heckled conservatives like Trump's son Donald Trump, Jr. But Donald Trump, Sr. kept on retweeting Malkin even after others on the Right dropped her, and he never forgets a slight to his family. That makes it hard to believe he had no idea who Fuentes, whose flattery he reportedly enjoyed, was.
For Trump to grant Fuentes a public meeting after all this isn't merely indicative of bad judgment. It's a blow to efforts to isolate and condemn those who are helping to mainstream a rising tide of antisemitic invective throughout American society.
It also helps to vindicate the claims of left-wing anti-Trumpers that Trump has fomented antisemitism that has, until now, been thinly veiled tripe.
To be sure, Trump's supporters have had good reason to dismiss claims that he is an antisemite. The accusation that he had called the neo-Nazis at Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 "very fine people" was a lie. Trump's historic record of support for Israel surpassed any of his predecessors. His administration also did more to combat antisemitism on college campuses than any other before (or after) it.
Still, the meeting with Ye and Fuentes sends a signal to the country that outrage over their hate is merely another example of cancel culture run amok, rather than a necessary expression of concern about the way Jew-hatred has become increasingly fashionable in some sectors of both the Left and the Right.
Given that Trump never apologizes for anything he has done and is unlikely to disavow his dinner companions—as loyal supporters like former Trump lawyer and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman urged him to do—this incident shouldn't be forgotten.
Just as troubling is the near-certainty that many of Trump's most avid supporters will not only downplay the incident, but will, as conservative talker Candace Owens has already done with her defense of West, embrace anyone that their leader thinks is okay.
It's true that Democrats are guilty of similar actions that legitimize antisemites. Former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have met with the Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan, who has done so much to foment antisemitism in the black community. And just this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken took Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who has spouted memes of Jew-hatred and is a supporter of the antisemitic BDS movement, as part of his official delegation to the World Cup in Qatar.
But that doesn't excuse Trump or lessen the embarrassment to his supporters.
Only days before the dinner with Ye and Fuentes, Trump had addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition as part of his effort to shore up support for his 2024 run. The week before that, he was honored by the Zionist Organization of America at its annual New York City gala. But barring an unlikely apology, Trump has not only made it easier for liberals to make the case that their prior accusations were correct, but also made it impossible for Jewish Republicans or anyone else who cares about the spread of antisemitism to support his attempt to return to the White House.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.org and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
