Republicans Are Really Quiet After Trump’s Dinner With White Supremacist Nicholas Fuentes

The Republican establishment has been largely silent in the week since former President Donald Trump met with dinner guest from hell white supremacist Nick Fuentes.

Fuentes, a Holocaust denier and Vladimir Putin supporter, arrived Tuesday at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate alongside rapper Kanye West, another outspoken antisemite.

Trump confirmed a few days later that he had a dinner meeting with both men. He claimed he didn’t know who Fuentes was, but he has previously retweeted a clip from Fuentes’s internet show. 

As of Monday morning, not a single member of the GOP leadership in Congress had condemned Trump’s meeting with Fuentes.

Some Republicans have spoken out against the meeting but have either been wishy-washy or avoided mentioning Trump by name. Representative James Comer said Trump merely “needs better judgment in who he dines with,” while RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel only said that white supremacy and neo-Nazism are “disgusting.”

Those who have explicitly called Trump out are not lawmakers in positions with much influence on the GOP at large.

Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both members of the House January 6 committee, were quick to condemn Trump, with Cheney calling the meeting “indefensible.” Unfortunately, both members are leaving Congress in January.

Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, rumored to be considering a 2024 presidential run, said Trump knew what he was doing when he met with Fuentes and warned against “empowering the extremes.”

But Representative Kevin McCarthy, who is the Republican nominee for speaker of the House, has remained silent, likely because condemning Trump risks alienating the former leader’s supporters still in Congress (speaking of empowering the extremes). McCarthy will need every vote he can get if he is to become speaker.

Despite a poor showing by MAGA candidates during the midterms, Trump still holds considerable sway in Congress. The GOP establishment seems to be souring on him, but they still need his support to present a unified front.

It is just over a week before the Georgia runoff election between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker. The fate of the Senate—whether it will remain a 50–50 Democratic majority by tie-break, or outright 51–49 Democratic advantage—is up in the air.

A typical candidate might rise to the occasion and maintain a strong, focused message. But not Walker, as the Warnock campaign’s latest ad notes. From his unintelligible rambling to his outright lying, Walker has left voters wondering: “Y’all serious about this, right?”

“Not only does it make no sense—I don’t even understand what he thinks he’s saying,” said one voter.

The ad, released Saturday, includes Walker rambling about how China gets all the “good air” while America has to clean up all the other air. “It’s all the same air,” another voter responds, exasperated. Each reaction more incredulous than the last.

Just as Warnock was able to contrast himself against a candidate rife with controversy and unlikability in Kelly Loeffler during his last Georgia Senate runoff, he is poised to do the same once more against Walker.

Walker is not only a serial liar, an alleged abuser, viciously transphobic, an ostensible puppet for the GOP, and a potential tax fraudster—he’s simply not a coherent person who can connect with voters in any meaningful sense beyond being a rubber stamp for Republicans and their unpopular policies.

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin has already pivoted to blaming Tuesday night’s mass shooting on the U.S. “mental health crisis,” despite pushing policies that would actually have a detrimental effect on mental health care.

Six people were killed and another four wounded when a gunman opened fire at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, Tuesday night. The shooting comes just a few days after an attack on a queer club in Colorado Springs, and less than two weeks after a shooting at the University of Virginia that left three students dead.

Youngkin, who has said he thinks there should be no gun safety measures in his state, has avoided saying the words “shooting” or “gun” when discussing any of the three most recent tragedies.

He said Wednesday that all three are “a moment to reflect on the state of mind of America and Virginia and this mental health crisis that we know we’re in the middle of.”

Mental health is often highlighted when looking for reasons behind a mass shooting, particularly among Republicans. But health experts say that doing so simplifies the circumstances that lead to such attacks. Meanwhile, widespread access to firearms and stalled gun legislation reform—most often the result of Republican opposition—are also to blame for mass shootings.

And to make matters worse, Republicans don’t actually seem to have a plan to address the mental health issues they’re so quick to cite after mass shootings.

Virginia’s latest budget, which Youngkin signed into effect in July, does include increased funding for mental health care, including start-up funding for a crisis response center and a pay raise for state and state-sponsored mental health workers.

But Youngkin’s proposed policies to roll back the rights of transgender students could have a devastating effect on teenage mental health statewide, experts say. He has also vocally opposed the expansion of Medicaid, which many rely on for mental health purposes.

In June, President Joe Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act into law. The legislation, the first major gun reform bill in three decades, was also the biggest single expansion of mental health care in U.S. history since Obamacare and a huge expansion of Medicaid. Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow, the bill’s main architect, said that Republicans had initially wanted to address mental health separately from gun safety, despite constantly linking the two.

Republicans have also been working constantly to gut Medicaid, as well as the Affordable Care Act, which was the single biggest expansion of mental health care when it passed.

Herschel Walker has lied about paying for a girlfriend’s abortion, about graduating in the top 1 percent of his college class (or graduating at all), about being a police officer, and much, much more. And now it seems like he’s lying about where he even lives.

The Georgia Senate candidate is receiving a 2022 tax break meant for Texas residents, reports CNN, potentially violating Texas tax rules and Georgia residency rules regarding voting or running for office. The revelation comes as Walker faces off against Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock in a December runoff election.

The Republican is set to receive a Texas homestead tax exemption in 2022—which someone can only take on their “principal residence.” A county tax assessor office told CNN that Walker took the tax break in 2021 as well, both breaks coming after he launched his candidacy for Senate in Georgia.

Before moving to Georgia to run for office, Walker had lived in a gated community near Dallas for over a decade. Georgia has 15 rules considered for establishing residency and eligibility to run for office—including where one accepts a homestead tax exemption.

The technical legality of Walker’s Senate campaign is therefore ambiguous. Not all 15 Georgia rules have to be followed in order to establish residency. Meanwhile, the Constitution only requires a Senate candidate to be an “inhabitant” of the state they run in.

Just as Mehmet Oz was attacked for being a New Jersey outsider running in a Pennsylvania Senate race, Walker’s legitimacy as a candidate is up for debate. Even if Walker’s candidacy is up to legal snuff, the perception of him simply acting as a carpetbagging vestige of the Republican Party risks his bid.

And it won’t be easy for Walker to shake that perception. Republicans literally walk Walker around from appearance to appearance, proudly describing how the Black candidate apparently serves as a tool for the party’s political ambitions. It’s hard not to see Walker as a Republican transplant just being used by the party to try winning an election.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson has taken his anti-LGBTQ rhetoric in the wake of the Colorado Springs shooting a step further, accusing the community of continuing to bring the violence on itself.

Carlson’s guest Tuesday night was Jaimee Mitchell, the founder of Gays Against Groomers. The anti-trans group launched in June ostensibly to protect children against sexual exploitation, but really pushes a conspiracy theory that higher powers are trying to force kids to transition.

Mitchell herself has shared racist and Nazi views, follows known white supremacists on social media, and encourages violent rhetoric—and Tuesday night was no exception.

“The tragedy that happened in Colorado Springs the other night, you know, it was expected and predictable,” she told Carlson. “I don’t think it’s going to stop until we end this evil agenda that is attacking children.”

During the show, Carlson also falsely claimed that gender-affirming care for trans children was the same as child abuse and that teaching kids about gender and sexuality is sexual exploitation.

People were quick to note the chilling nature of Carlson and Mitchell’s conversation.

Five people were killed and at least 25 wounded Saturday night, the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance, when a gunman entered the queer Club Q in Colorado Springs and opened fire. Two of the victims were trans, as was one of the people credited with helping to stop the shooter.

Since the shooting, many on the far right have been quick to distance themselves from having helped engender the attack—or even, like Carlson, to blame the LGBTQ community for it.