I concur with the assessments of Phil, Andy, and Jay on former president Trump dining and choosing to chat with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, and the appalling exhibition of egregious judgment. (Apparently Milo Yiannopoulos was in attendance as well, turning the event into the Mount Rushmore of loudmouth narcissists.)
I also go back and forth on the question of whether it’s worth it to commit significant amounts of time and energy to denouncing Trump’s gathering.
A former president choosing to meet with this ugly crowd is too newsworthy to ignore, and anyone with a shred of decency or functioning brain cells would, could, and should say, “no, you should not welcome a hip-hop star who recently pledged to go to ‘Death Con Three on Jewish people’ and a Holocaust-denying white nationalist.” (Note that Kanye’s antisemitism and hatred are so spectacularly ignorant and lazy that he can’t be bothered to look up that it’s DEFCON, as in “defense readiness condition,” not “Death Con,” and that the highest level of alert is DEFCON One, the lowest level DEFCON Five.) Maybe Trump didn’t know who Fuentes is, maybe he did. The fact that he felt no need to denounce Fuentes’s odious views — while erupting in furious rage at any Republican he deems insufficiently deferential — reveals everything you need to know about Trump’s character and true values.
On the other hand, this is a familiar-to-the-point-of-boring part of Trump’s schtick and pattern of welcoming all controversy and all coverage, and uncontrollable neediness for praise — and Fuentes’s desire to be a bigger deal than the little troll that he is. It feels like by talking about that dinner, even to denounce the attendees, we’re doing all of those narcissists a favor.