A new report details how embattled rapper Kanye West ambushed former President Donald Trump with unexpected dinner guests, white supremacist Nick Fuentes and alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, at what was supposed to be a private meal.
West, who was a former Trump supporter before launching a rival presidential campaign in 2020, has become persona non grata after a slew of antisemitic remarks in what appears to be the bipolar melt down of the century.
Trump agreed to provide him with counsel at a dinner held at his Florida Mar-a-Lago club, in the wake of West’s antics severing multi-billion dollar business relationships with the GAP, Adidas, and Chase bank, which caused the worth of his Yeezy brand to plummet.
“Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, was asking me for advice concerning some of his difficulties, in particular having to do with his business,” Trump explained on his platform Truth Social.
“We also discussed, to a lesser extent, politics, where I told him he should definitely not run for President, ‘any voters you may have should vote for TRUMP.'”
Instead of showing up alone, West brought along Fuentes and Yiannopoulos in a move that “blindsided” Trump, according to the report.
“It was a setup,” the anonymous Trump confidant told NBC News.
The next day, West released a video on Twitter recounting the evening, and admitted to angering the former president by blasting him for not paying the legal bills of jailed Capitol rioters.
He also incensed Trump by adding that he was considering a second presidential run and that the 45th President should be his running mate.
In the ultimate damning move, West told his followers that “Trump is really impressed with Nick Fuentes.”
“The master troll got trolled,” the unnamed confidant said. “Kanye punked Trump.”
Fuentes rose to infamy in 2020, when he was banned from YouTube for hate speech that included spewing white nationalism, praising the Taliban, and denying the Holocaust.
Trump maintains that he had no idea who Fuentes was while they dined together. “I didn’t know Nick Fuentes,” he posted in the meeting’s aftermath.
“[West] 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 said in a follow-up.
The “political person” was Milo Yiannopoulos, a former disgraced Breitbart editor who solicited white nationalists and resigned after he was accused of advocating for pedophilia in 2017.
Yiannopoulos told NBC News he was “the architect” of crashing the Mar-a-Lago meeting and set it up “just to make Trump’s life miserable.”
“I wanted to show Trump the kind of talent that he’s missing out on by allowing his terrible handlers to dictate who he can and can’t hang out with,” he said about himself and Fuentes, who are acting as political advisors to West.
“I also wanted to send a message to Trump that he has systematically repeatedly neglected, ignored, abused the people who love him the most, the people who put him in office, and that kind of behavior comes back to bite you in the end,” Yiannopoulos remarked.
Fuentes explained that at dinner, he slammed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for potentially challenging Trump in the GOP primary, and said that the former president was at risk of losing in 2024.
“I hate to say it, but the chickens are coming home to roost. You know, this is the frustration with his base and with his true loyalists,” he commented.
Plenty of Republican lawmakers, including former Vice President Mike Pence, blasted Trump for dining with the troublesome trio.
“President Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, an antisemite and a Holocaust denier a seat at the table, and I think he should apologize for it,” Pence denounced.
“And he should denounce those individuals and their hateful rhetoric without qualification.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said he condemns Fuentes’ ideology, “it has no place in society at all,” but backed Trump’s claim that he had no idea who the YouTuber was during the Mar-a-Lago dinner.
“I don’t think anybody should be spending any time with Nick Fuentes. He has no place in this Republican Party,” McCarthy stated.
“I think President Trump came out four times and condemned him and didn’t know who he was.”
On Tuesday, MNSBC host Joy Reid claimed that Fuentes’ views aren’t that far off from conservatives’.
“They don’t believe in elections. They don’t necessarily like the idea of democracy,” she spat. “They don’t like the idea of women controlling their bodies.”
“They clearly wouldn’t mind having a dictator because they don’t think that elections matter and they think they should decide who the president of the United States is.”
“They hate the culture. They are angry the culture is too friendly to LGBTQ people,” she concluded her rant.
“I see a very small degree of difference between what he believes and what they believe.”