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From McConnell to McCarthy, Republican leaders criticize Trump’s dinner with Holocaust denier
(JTA) — A week after former President Donald Trump dined with two men who are known for their outspoken antisemitism, Republican leaders are beginning to speak out — though some are sparing Trump direct criticism.
Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader in the Senate, said Trump’s Nov. 20 dinner with Kanye West, the rapper and designer who in recent weeks has come out as antisemitic, and Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist who has denied the Holocaust and said he wants all Jews out of the United States, was a blow to Trump’s bid to be reelected in 2024.
“First, let me just say that there is no room in the Republican Party for antisemitism or white supremacy,” McConnell said Tuesday when he met with a gaggle of reporters in the Senate. “And anyone meeting with people advocating that point of view, in my judgment, are highly unlikely to ever be elected president of the United States.”
Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the likely next speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, did not directly criticize Trump, echoing a number of other Republicans who have spoken out.
Referring to Fuentes, McCarthy said, “I condemn his ideology; it has no place in society at all.”
About Trump, he said, “The president can have meetings with who he wants; I don’t think anybody, though, should have a meeting with Nick Fuentes.” McCarthy said Trump condemned Fuentes “four times.” Trump has not done so, although he has said multiple times that he did not know who Fuentes was and that he was an unexpected guest of West, who now goes by Ye.
Trump responded to the mounting criticism late Tuesday, saying again that he hadn’t known Fuentes, an organizer of rallies on his behalf, before the meeting, and for the first time indicating disapproval of his views.
“I had never heard of the man — I had no idea what his views were, and they weren’t expressed at the table in our very quick dinner, or it wouldn’t have been accepted,” Trump told Fox News.
The varying responses — McConnell outspoken and McCarthy evasive — reflected where each leader stands in the party. McConnell, who has tangled with Trump since the former president spread lies about winning the 2020 election that led to a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, handily headed off a Trump-backed leadership challenge earlier this month, even as Republicans failed to recapture the Senate in midterm elections.
McCarthy, on the other hand, leads a caucus that wrested the House from Democrats but by a bare majority. If he wants to be elected speaker on Jan. 3, the first day of the new Congress, he needs the vote of a small but powerful faction of House Republicans who remain loyal to Trump.
Meanwhile, Mike Pence, Trump’s vice president, has called on Trump to apologize — an action Trump has always been loath to take.
“President Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist., an antisemite, and a Holocaust denier a seat at the table, and I think he should apologize for it,” Pence said Monday on NewsNation, a cable network.
Pence, unfailingly loyal to Trump during the presidency, has broken with the former president since refusing to heed Trump’s pleas to illegally rig the electoral vote count on Jan. 6. The vice president, in a ceremonial role, supervises the count. A number of the rioters who breached the Capitol said they hoped to kill Pence.
A number of GOP senators, confronted by reporters in the halls of Congress as they returned from Thanksgiving break, also spoke out. “I think it’s ridiculous that he had that meeting,” said Joni Ernst of Iowa. “Just it’s ridiculous. And that’s, that’s all I’m gonna say about it. Just crazy.”
A handful of Republicans, including several who have for years criticized Trump, spoke out as soon as the meeting with Fuentes was confirmed last Friday. A few others who were close to Trump, including David Friedman, his ambassador to Israel, also spoke out to denounce the meeting.
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The post From McConnell to McCarthy, Republican leaders criticize Trump’s dinner with Holocaust denier appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Puppet Monty Pickle is guest on the Forward’s ‘Yiddish Word of the Day’
It’s not every day that a kosher dill pickle puppet gets a chance to learn some Yiddish.
Monty Pickle, star of the children’s series The Monty Pickle Show, recently joined Rukhl Schaechter, host of the Forward’s YouTube series Yiddish Word of the Day, for an episode teaching viewers the Yiddish words for various wild animals.
Or as they’re called in Yiddish: vilde khayes.
The Monty Pickle Show, a puppet comedy on YouTube and TikTok, aims to show young viewers what it means to be Jewish in a fun, lively way. The series was created by the Emmy Award-winning producers of Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock.
So far, he’s met a number of Jewish personalities, including rabbis, musicians and chefs, and explored holidays like Rosh Hashanah, Hanukkah and Passover.
Sitting alongside Rukhl during the lesson, Monty eagerly tries to guess what each word means, providing for some very funny moments.
The post Puppet Monty Pickle is guest on the Forward’s ‘Yiddish Word of the Day’ appeared first on The Forward.
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IDF Nabs Islamic State Terror Suspect in Syria
Guns seized in the course of the operation. Photo: IDF Spokesperson via i24
i24 News – Israel Defense Forces soldiers conducted an operation on Wednesday in the area of Rafid in southern Syria to apprehend a suspected terrorist affiliated with ISIS, the military spokesperson said on Saturday.
The announcement comes as Washington announced a major operation to eliminated Islamic State terrorists in Syria after three Americans lost their lives in a jihadist attack in Palmyra.
The Israeli soldiers completed the operation in Syria “in cooperation with IDF intelligence,” the statement read, adding that “the suspect was transferred for further processing in Israeli territory.”
Additionally, during the operation, weapons were found and seized.
IDF troops “continue to remain deployed along the Golan Heights border in order to protect the State of Israel and its citizens,” the statement from the spokesperson concluded.
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Report: Trump Admin Envisions Transformation of Gaza into Chic High-Tech Metropolis
US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, Washington, DC, Jan. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
i24 News – The US administration of President Trump vision for the future of Gaza has it transformed into a high-end high-tech hub of luxury and innovation, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
A team of officials understood to be led by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff developed a draft proposal to convert the war-ravaged Palestinian territory into a glittering metropolis, propelling Gazans from poverty to prosperity.
US officials with familiarity with the plan—pitched to foreign governments and delegations as a PowerPoint presentation— are cited in the report as saying that, understandable open-endedness of a project in its early phase notwithstanding, the blueprint has many lacunae and leaves crucial questions unanswered.
Critics cite the plan’s silence on the thorny question of disarming Hamas, the Islamist terror group that ruled Gaza for the past 15 years, and initiated the cross-border incursion and massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023; the attack launched the devastating war that has left much of the coastal territory in ruins.
The plan’s projected cost is put at $112.1 billion over 10 years, with Washington prepared to commit support to the tune of some $60 billion in grants and guarantees on debt for “all the contemplated workstreams” in that time period.
The question of where two million Gazans would reside during the costly and lengthy rebuilding is also left unaddressed, it is understood.
Similar-sounding plans have been mooted by the Trump administration even before it managed to broker a ceasefire in October that paused the two year-long war.