GOP Governor Warns Trump 'Empowering the Extremes' With Nick Fuentes Dinner

Former President Donald Trump is "empowering the extremes" by not condemning white nationalist Nick Fuentes after the two dined together at Mar-a-Lago, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson said Sunday.

Hutchinson, a Republican, is the latest political figure to condemn Trump's dinner with Fuentes, a Holocaust denier, and rapper Kanye West, who has recently made several antisemitic comments online. The controversy comes only weeks after Trump announced his 2024 presidential bid.

During an appearance on CNN's State of the Union, Hutchinson, who prosecuted white supremacist groups as the state's attorney, said it's "not a good idea" for political leaders to meet with racists and antisemites.

"It's troubling, and it shouldn't happen," he said. "We need to avoid those kinds of empowering the extremes. When you meet with people, you empower. That's what you have to avoid. You want to diminish their strength, not empower them. Stay away from them."

Trump has defended the meeting with Fuentes, describing it as accidental. He said in a recent Truth Social post that West showed up with three other individuals, including Fuentes, who he said he did not know prior to the dinner.

"He shows up with 3 people, two of which I didn't know, the other a political person who I haven't seen in years," the former president wrote.

Hutchinson, however, dismissed Trump's remarks about the nature of the meeting, suggesting he needs to do more to disavow white supremacists such as Fuentes, who the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes as a "white supremacist leader and organizer and podcaster who seeks to forge a white nationalist alternative to the mainstream GOP."

"This was not an accidental meeting. It was a set up dinner with Kanye," he said. "You certainly, at every occasion that the question of white supremacy or neo-Nazism or denying the Holocaust comes up—you've got to be absolutely clear in your communication that this is not acceptable dogma. It's not acceptable conversation. It's not acceptable history."

Trump Defends Fuentes, West Dinner Amid Backlash

Trump continues facing backlash for the dinner with Fuentes and West, the latter who said in October that he would go "death con 3" on Jewish people amid other antisemitic comments.

"We got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on 'Tucker Carlson.' Why wouldn't I agree to meet? Also, I didn't know Nick Fuentes," Trump wrote on Truth Social, responding to the backlash.

Others have also criticized Trump for the dinner, adding onto a difficult month for the former president. Some in the GOP also sought to distance themselves from Trump after his endorsed candidates lost in key races in an underwhelming midterm for Republicans.

"We'll live to regret the mainstreaming of hate & bigotry. Turn a blind eye enough times, & it's no longer something we can dismiss as a shameful error in judgment — it becomes who we are. The GOP needs to loudly & unequivocally condemn Trump for meeting with both Ye & Fuentes," Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served as the White House Director of Strategic Communications in the Trump administration, tweeted.

"To all those who profess to condemn antisemitism among our leaders, but are quiet when Holocaust denier/white supremacist Nick Fuentes and avowed antisemite Kanye West are welcomed to dinner by Donald Trump: your silence is deafening," tweeted Representative-elect Daniel Goldman, a New York Democrat. "Speak out now by name or don't speak at all."

Newsweek reached out to Trump's office for comment.