U.S. President Donald Trump said there is no room in the Republican Party for those with antisemitic views and that the GOP should condemn those espousing them.
“From my own personal standpoint, absolutely, because I condemn,” Trump told The New York Times in a two-hour interview last week that was published on Monday.
“I have a daughter who’s married to a Jewish person,” he told the newspaper. “My daughter happens to be Jewish, and the beautiful three grandchildren are Jewish. I’m very proud of them.”
The president also touted his support of Israel and his efforts to obtain a ceasefire in the war between Hamas and Israel.
“There has been no better president in the history of the world as we know it that has been stronger or better and less antisemitic, certainly, than Donald Trump,” he said in the interview. “I have been the best president of the United States in the history of this country toward Israel, and that’s, by the way, acknowledged by everybody, including the fact that we have peace in the Middle East, and that’s going to hold.”
Trump’s comments came as several prominent Republicans, including former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, have faced criticism from several prominent party members for providing platforms to antisemites and Holocaust deniers, most notably Nick Fuentes. Carlson, a podcaster, was photographed in official images of a meeting that Trump held at the White House recently with oil executives.
At the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual legislative conference in October, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) and others went after Carlson for his friendly interview with Fuentes.
Speakers at the conference also aimed brickbats at the Heritage Foundation, whose president, Kevin Roberts, defended Carlson and said the pro-Trump conservative research group was not in the business of “canceling our own people.”
The president earlier passed up opportunities to criticize Carlson, who had a prime-time speaking slot at the 2024 Republican National Convention. “You can’t tell him who to interview,” Trump told reporters in November.
But this time, he went after the antisemites in his own party.
“I think we don’t need them. I think we don’t like them,” he told the Times.
Trump again claimed not to know Fuentes, who was a guest at a Mar-a-Lago dinner with the president and Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who has made his own antisemitic remarks and praised Adolf Hitler.
“I had dinner with him, one time, where he came as a guest of Kanye West,” Trump said. “I didn’t know who he was bringing. He said, ‘Do you mind if I bring a friend?’ I said, ‘I don’t care.’ And it was Nick Fuentes? I don’t know Nick Fuentes.”
Asked about Paul Ingrassia, whose nomination by Trump to lead the Office of Special Counsel ran aground after Ingrassia was quoted as saying, “I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time,” the president said, “I don’t know that. It’s possible. I have thousands of people working here.”
Ingrassia is now the general counsel of the General Services Administration.
