Pence calls on Trump to apologize for dinner with antisemite

NEW YORK (AP) — Former Vice President Mike Pence on Monday stated Donald Trump “demonstrated profoundly poor judgment” and referred to as on him to apologize after the previous president had dinner final week with a Holocaust-denying white nationalist and the rapper previously often known as Kanye West days after launching his third marketing campaign for the White Home.

“President Trump was unsuitable to provide a white nationalist, an antisemite and Holocaust denier, a seat on the desk and I believe he ought to apologize for it. And he ought to denounce these people and their hateful rhetoric with out qualification,” Pence stated in an interview with NewsNation’s Leland Vittert airing Monday evening.

Nonetheless, Pence, who’s contemplating his personal potential run in opposition to his former boss, stated he doesn’t imagine Trump is antisemitic or racist and stated he wouldn’t have served as Trump’s vp if he was.

“However I believe the President demonstrated profoundly poor judgment in giving these people a seat on the desk and as I stated, I believe he ought to apologize for it,” he added. “He ought to denounce them with out qualification.”

Trump had dinner final Tuesday at his Mar-a-Lago membership with West, who’s now often known as Ye, in addition to Nick Fuentes, a far-right activist with an extended historical past of antisemitic and white nationalist commentary.

Trump has stated that he had “by no means met and knew nothing about” Fuentes, who had accompanied Ye, earlier than the assembly. However he has to this point refused to acknowledge or denounce the positions of ether Fuentes or Ye, who has made his personal sequence of antisemitic feedback in latest weeks, resulting in his suspension from social media platforms and the top of his ties with main firms like Adidas.

The assembly has been criticized by Jewish teams just like the Zionist Group of America, which honored Trump simply two days earlier than his marketing campaign launch, Trump’s former ambassador to Israel, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, one other potential Trump 2024 rival, who has turn into an outspoken Trump critic.

“That is simply one other instance of an terrible lack of judgment from Donald Trump, which, mixed along with his previous poor judgments, make him an untenable common election candidate for the Republican Get together in 2024,” Christie instructed The New York Occasions.

On Saturday, Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, one other potential 2024 rival, denounced antisemitism as “a most cancers,” with out instantly referencing the dinner or the president underneath whom he served.

However different prime Republicans, together with many contemplating difficult Trump for the GOP nomination, have to this point remained silent, underscoring the maintain Trump maintains over the occasion, at the same time as he has been blamed for his or her worse-than-expected displaying through the midterm elections.