- An ex-Obama aide said Trump denying knowing Nick Fuentes is his "M.O."
- "He always tries to claim he does not associate with white nationalists," Alaina Beverly told MSNBC.
A former White House aide to President Obama said President Trump denying that he knows Nick Fuentes after their recent meet-up in Florida is his usual style.
"He always tries to claim he does not associate with white nationalists, that he does not know them. But he'll wink & nod in the same breath & say 'Proud boys, stand back & stand by," Alaina Beverly said during an appearance on MSNBC's "The Katie Phang Show," referring to when Trump name-dropped the far-right group during a presidential debate in 2020.
Beverly's comments come after Trump hosted fallen rap mogul Kanye "Ye" West, who asked the former president to be his running mate in 2024, and Fuentes, a Holocaust denier, at his Mar-a-Lago resort last week. Fuentes is notoriously known for participating in the 2017 Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally and has been labeled a "white supremacist" by authorities and the Anti-Defamation League, Insider reported.
—The Katie Phang Show (@katiephangshow) November 26, 2022
In a statement to Axios, Trump said that Ye "arrived with a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about," although the outlet noted that a source said he took a liking to Fuentes. The visit left Trump's advisers to scramble and try to get ahead of the fallout, calling it "a fucking nightmare."
"This is a man who uses the defense of ignorance all the time but continues to further the types of violence, the types of hate crimes, the types of white supremacy that helped keep him in the public eye and help to secure him in office," Beverly told MSNBC.