2024 Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance on August 3, 2024. Photo by CHRISTIAN MONTERROSA/AFP via Getty Images

By Jacob Kornbluh August 11, 2024

Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee, on Sunday downplayed former President Donald Trump’s dinner in 2022 with Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. Nonetheless, he said that white supremacy “doesn’t have any room in the MAGA movement,” Trump’s political base.

“The one thing I like about Donald Trump is that he actually will talk to anybody,” Vance said in an interview on ABC News’ This Week Sunday morning program. “But just because you talk to somebody doesn’t mean you endorse their views.” 

Trump faced backlash in 2022 for dining at Mar-a-Lago with Fuentes and Kanye West, the rapper who changed his name to Ye and who has spewed antisemitic conspiracies. Trump has said he didn’t know about Fuentes’ background before the dinner, but has not disavowed his antisemitism or racism.

ABC News host Jon Karl pressed Vance about it on Sunday. “That dinner that Trump had,” he said, “and of course, it was Kanye West, the guy that’s praised Hitler, who arranged it all. That was back a year and a half ago. And Trump still hasn’t given a full-throated denouncement of this guy, who is a white supremacist.”

Vance responded: “President Trump has issued plenty of condemnations on this.” Earlier in the exchange, he said, “Donald Trump doesn’t know anything about, and frankly, doesn’t care for” 

In an interview earlier this year, Vance also declined to condemn Trump’s dinner with West and Fuentes, and in 2021, Vance criticized X for suspending Fuentes’ account, citing free speech principles. Vance, a venture capitalist before entering politics, is also an investor in Rumble, a video platform that has amplified far-right antisemitism and Holocaust denial. Fuentes maintains an active page there featuring his live shows, which are replete with antisemitic and anti-Israel content.

Vance himself did disavow Fuentes, who had previously attacked Vance and his wife, Usha, over her Indian heritage.

“Look, I think the guy’s a total loser,” Vance said on CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday. “Certainly I disavow him.”

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