GOP lawmaker faces deep scrutiny for excusing Trump’s controversial meeting with Nick Fuentes

Meaghan Ellis
29 November 2022
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Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) is being deeply scrutinized for his attempt to make excuses for former President Donald Trump's controversial meeting with a high-profile white supremacist.

On Monday, November 28, the North Carolina lawmaker spoke with NBC senior national political reporter Sahil Kapur to offer his take on Trump's latest announcement.

Over the weekend, the former president admitted that he'd hosted a dinner at Mar-a-Lago with far-right influencer Nick Fuentes and rapper Kanye West. The dinner, which reportedly took place sometime last week, has led to more scrutiny of the former president.

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However, Tillis isn't blaming Trump for the dinner meeting. He's blaming the former president's staff. “If the reports are true and the president didn’t know who [Fuentes] was, whoever let him in the room should be fired,” Tillis said, according to Kapur.

It didn't take long for Twitter users to fire back at Tillis for his seemingly futile defense of Trump. "What a pathetic answer," one Twitter user tweeted.

Another user argued, "You can make the 'Trump has weak staffing' argument to a point, but Trump has known who Fuentes was now for at least six days. Why has there been no denunciation of him and his views?"

"Familiar from Russian history: The tsar can never be wrong," another Twitter user added. "It's all the fault of bad advisers."

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In fact, some Republican lawmakers even condemned the meeting. “There’s no room in the Republican Party for white supremacists and antisemitism, so it’s wrong,” said Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.). Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) also expressed concern about the meeting.

According to HuffPost, Rubio "called Ye 'disturbed' and Fuentes 'evil' and said that Trump should not have met with Fuentes because it legitimized the white supremacist."

Despite Tillis' attempt to defend Trump, the former president has a history of embracing far-right Republican leaders and influencers.

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