Republicans divided over Trump hosting Ye, ‘associates’ at Mar-a-Lago: survey

About one-third of Republicans indicated approval of former President Trump’s recent dinner with rapper Ye and “his associates,” but disapproval shot up when asked specifically about white supremacist Nick Fuentes’s presence, according to a new YouGov-Yahoo poll.

The poll found 36 percent of Republicans approved of the dinner when it was framed as hosting Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, and Ye’s “associates,” but that figure fell below 20 percent when the dinner was framed as Trump dining with Fuentes.

Trump has garnered bipartisan criticism for the Thanksgiving week dinner at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, which came days after the former president formally entered the 2024 race and after Ye made a series of antisemitic comments that caused him to lose multiple brand partnerships.

The former president has claimed he didn’t know Fuentes, an avowed white supremacist and Holocaust denier, and later indicated he “had no idea” about Fuentes’s views, although Trump did not condemn him.

But a plurality of all Americans indicated disapproval of the dinner no matter how it was framed.

When asked about Trump dining with Ye and his associates, the poll found 41 percent of respondents disapproved of the dinner, compared to 23 percent who approved and 36 percent who weren’t sure.

Among Republicans, 28 percent voiced disapproval, trailing the 36 percent who approved. Thirty seven percent of Republicans weren’t sure.

The pollster also asked respondents if they approved of Trump dining with Fuentes specifically, but the question came in two versions.

In one version, where the pollster primed the question by noting Fuentes’s past comments suggesting the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack was “awesome” and that “this is going to get a lot uglier” for Jews, 15 percent of respondents voiced approval for the dinner and 56 percent voiced disapproval.

Among Republicans, 18 percent approved with that framing while 53 percent disapproved. Twenty nine percent weren’t sure.

When Fuentes was named but his background was not explicitly mentioned, only 27 percent of Republicans disapproved of the dinner. Nineteen percent approved, and a majority — 54 percent — weren’t sure.

But the poll also suggested the dinner may not significantly dent the former president’s support for the 2024 primary.

Sixty-nine percent of Republicans in the poll said the dinner does not change their opinion of Trump. 

The poll was conducted from Dec. 1 to Dec. 5 among 1,635 U.S. adults. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.