Senator Thom Tillis (RN.C.) received flak online Monday after attempting to blame Donald Trump’s staff for allowing the former president to host a high-profile white supremacist for dinner.
Trump admitted over the weekend that he dined at Mar-a-Lago last week with far-right provocateur Nick Fuentes and Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West. Trump claimed he had no idea who Fuentes was and that Ye brought him to his Florida estate as a guest.
“If the reports are true and the president didn’t know who [Fuentes] whoever let him into the room should be fired,” Tillis said, according to NBC senior national political reporter Sahil Kapur.
The dinner provoked heated reactions and condemnation from Democrats, civil rights groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, and even some of Trump’s Republican allies in Congress.
For example, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said, “There’s no room in the Republican Party for white supremacists and anti-Semitism, so it’s wrong.” Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) called Thou “disturbed” and Fuentes “bad” and said Trump should not have met Fuentes because it legitimized the white supremacist.
Fuentes has vocally embraced racist and anti-Semitic views and in 2017 was present at the violent “Unite the Right” neo-Nazi rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia. Ye’s professional empire is in jeopardy after he made a series of disturbing anti-Semitic remarks earlier this year.
According to sources quoted by Axios and The New York Times, Trump praised Fuentes at the rally, saying, “He gets me.”
Tillis’ excuse did not go down well with Twitter users, though some agreed that the person responsible should be fired:
