President Joe Biden.Photo: Ting Shen/Bloomberg/Getty
PresidentJoe Bidenissued a forceful denunciation of antisemitism one day afterKanye Westsaid, “I like Hitler,” denied that the Holocaust happened and posted a swastika on Twitter.
“I just want to make a few things clear: The Holocaust happened,” Biden wrote in the tweet, published Friday afternoon.
He continued: “Hitler was a demonic figure. And instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides. Silence is complicity.”
West has beenembroiled in controversyfor more than a month due to hisantisemitic remarks. In a Thursday appearance on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' show, he doubled down, praising Adolf Hitler and saying Nazis “did good things too; we’ve got to stop dissing the Nazis all the time.” (Hitler murdered approximatelysix million European Jews and at least five million prisoners of war.)
Just last week, former PresidentDonald Trump— who recentlylaunched his 2024 campaignfor the presidency — had a private dinner with West and white supremacist Nick Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
Trump issued a number of statements after the dinner — which took place last Tuesday — was first reported, saying he “knew nothing” about Fuentes, but stopping short of repudiating the white supremacist or his views.
“This past week,Kanye Westcalled me to have dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Shortly thereafter, he unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform in an initial statement. “We had dinner on Tuesday evening with many members present on the back patio. The dinner was quick and uneventful. They then left for the airport.”
Trump later revised his statement further, but still didn’t repudiate Fuentes or West, writing later that he was helping the rapper, who he called “a seriously troubled man, who just happens to be black” after the rapper was " decimated in his business and virtually everything else."
In a third statement, Trump said he “had no idea what [Fuentes'] views were, and they weren’t expressed at the table in our very quick dinner, or it wouldn’t have been accepted.”
Trump has not yet issued a statement following West’s antisemitic remarks.
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Thee White House criticized Trump for hosting both West and Fuentes prior to the rapper’s latest remarks, with Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates saying in a statement: “Bigotry, hate, and antisemitism have absolutely no place in America — including at Mar-A-Lago. Holocaust denial is repugnant and dangerous, and it must be forcefully condemned.”
source: people.com
