Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), a prominent centrist Republican, said Monday that former President Trump should not have had a meal or a meeting with Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist organizer and podcaster.
“I condemn white supremacy and antisemitism. The president should never have had a meal or even a meeting with Nick Fuentes,” Collins told reporters when asked about a dinner Trump had with Fuentes and Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, at Mar-a-Lago before Thanksgiving.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported that Fuentes and his followers support closing U.S. borders to immigrants and oppose feminism and LGBTQ rights as the “bastardized Jewish subversion of the American creed.”
The ADL also pointed out that Fuentes attended the white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform, that West asked him to have dinner at Mar-a-Lago and “unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about,” referring to Fuentes.
West later claimed that Trump was “really impressed” with Fuentes.
Collins made her comments shortly after fellow centrist Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy (La.) ripped Trump for hosting Fuentes at his table.
“President Trump hosting racist antisemites for dinner encourages other racist antisemites. These attitudes are immoral and should not be entertained. This is not the Republican Party,” Cassidy tweeted Monday.