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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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The Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life, 2025
In honor of The Algemeiner‘s 12th annual gala, we are proud to present our “J100” list — 100 individuals who have positively influenced Jewish life over the past year.
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Argentina’s Milei Visits Rebbe’s Ohel, Grave of Chabad Leader, in New York, Reaffirms Strong Support for Israel
Argentine President Javier Milei speaks during a Plenum session of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, in Jerusalem, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Argentina’s President Javier Milei visited the Rebbe’s Ohel, the resting place of Chabad-Lubavitch leader Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, in Queens, New York on Sunday during his US diplomatic tour, reaffirming his strong support for Israel and solidarity with the Jewish community amid rising Middle East tensions.
Alongside Rabbi Simon Jacobson, chairman and publisher of The Algemeiner, the Argentine president visited the mausoleum of the world-renowned Jewish thinker and spiritual leader.
Over the years, the site has drawn not only devoted Jewish pilgrims but also leaders and public figures from around the world seeking guidance, inspiration, and a moment of reflection.
Milei’s visit to the Ohel marked his first stop in New York, a spiritually significant and politically symbolic gesture that comes amid surging antisemitism around the world and ongoing conflict in the Middle East, where the US and Israel continue to wage a military campaign against Iran.
Together with Foreign Secretary Pablo Quirno, Chief of Staff Manuel Adorni, and Secretary General of the Presidency Karina Milei, the Argentine leader began his diplomatic tour in Miami earlier this week, marking his 15th visit to the United States.
Organized by the Argentine Embassy as part of Argentina Week, in partnership with Bank of America and J.P. Morgan, this latest tour aims to strengthen diplomatic ties with allied leaders while attracting new investment to Buenos Aires.
On Saturday, Milei participated in the “Shields of the Americas” summit in Miami, which brought together political leaders and business figures from across the continent.
He also attended a luncheon hosted by US President Donald Trump and was honored with an award at the Hispanic Prosperity Gala.
While in New York, Milei spoke at Yeshiva University in Manhattan, delivering a speech that underscored his commitment to fighting terrorism and promoting stronger international cooperation.
“I feel like the most Zionist president in the world,” the Argentine leader said during his speech.
He also reaffirmed his support for Israel and the United States amid the current escalation in the war with Iran, declaring, “We are going to win.”
Since the start of the war, Milei has voiced strong backing for the US and Israel’s military campaign against Iran. At the same time, his government has heightened security alerts amid growing concerns that Iran and its terrorist proxies could activate sleeper cells abroad in retaliation.
While in New York, he is also set to attend The Algemeiner‘s annual gala, where on Monday he will be honored for his “unwavering moral clarity, principled leadership, and steadfast support for Israel and the Jewish people.”
Milei will conclude his tour with a visit to Chile to attend the presidential inauguration of newly elected president José Antonio Kast.
Since taking office over a year ago, Milei has been one of Israel’s most vocal supporters, strengthening bilateral relations to unprecedented levels and in the process breaking with decades of Argentine foreign policy tradition to firmly align with Jerusalem and Washington.
Last year, Milei formally launched the Isaac Accords with the aim of strengthening political, economic, and cultural cooperation between the Jewish state and Latin American governments.
The Argentine leader called his country a “pioneer” alongside the United States in promoting the new framework, emphasizing its role in fostering closer ties between Israel and the region across key strategic fields.
Milei also announced plans to relocate the country’s embassy to Jerusalem next spring, fulfilling a promise made last year, as the two allies continue to strengthen their bilateral ties.
Less than a year after the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Argentina became the first Latin American country to designate the Palestinian Islamist group as a terrorist organization.
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French Jewish Girl Assaulted Near Paris, Adolescents Arrested for Antisemitic Attack
Sign reading “+1000% of Antisemitic Acts: These Are Not Just Numbers” during a march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
Three teenage boys assaulted a 14-year-old Jewish girl and threatened to kill her in the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles on Friday, police said, resulting in a trip to the hospital for the victim and arrests for two of the 12-year-old suspects.
The incident began when three younger boys approached an older teenage girl to ask why she failed to observe Ramadan, according to local media reports. After she disclosed her Jewish identity, the three reportedly began calling her a “dirty Jew” and one threatened, “I’ll kill you on the Koran.” They then allegedly beat her, especially on her face.
The assault required a trip to the emergency room, where hospital staff described her as in a state of shock.
Paris law enforcement arrested two suspects that evening and seek to identify the third.
Another suburb of Paris also saw an antisemitic incident on Sunday when vandals hit a Kosher restaurant in Levallois-Perret, spray-painting “dirty Jew” in red across the building’s windows.
A kosher restaurant in Levallois-Perret, near Paris vandalized with antisemitic graffiti reading “Dirty Jew.” Photo: Screenshot
Antisemitic vandals hit Kokoriko, another Kosher restaurant in Paris, just two weeks earlier. Investigators say the criminals sprayed acid on tables, walls, and the floor, rendering silverware and plates unusable.
That attack came just days after the French Interior Ministry last month released its annual report on anti-religious acts, revealing a troubling rise in antisemitic incidents documented in a joint dataset compiled with the Jewish Community Protection Service.
Antisemitism in France remained at alarmingly high levels last year, with 1,320 incidents recorded nationwide, as Jews and Israelis faced several targeted attacks, according to the data.
Although the total number of antisemitic outrages in 2025 fell by 16 percent compared to 2024’s second highest ever total of 1,570 cases, the newly released report warned that antisemitism remained “historically high,” with more than 3.5 attacks occurring every day.
Even though Jews make up less than 1 percent of France’s population, they accounted for 53 percent of all religiously motivated crimes last year.
Between 2022 and 2025, antisemitic attacks across France quadrupled.
The most recent figure of total antisemitic incidents represents a 21 percent decline from 2023’s record high of 1,676 incidents, but a 203 percent increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022, before the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
The surge in antisemitism appears to have carried into this year. Last month, a 13-year-old boy on his way to synagogue in Paris was brutally beaten by a knife-wielding assailant.
“How do you find the words to explain to a 13-year-old child that he is being attacked because he is Jewish? Who will be able to restore his confidence in the future tomorrow?” Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), said of the incident.
One-third of last year’s antisemitic incidents in France explicitly referencing Palestine or the war in Gaza, indicting that anti-Israel rhetoric is fueling antisemitism.
The prominence of anti-Zionist forms of antisemitism has prompted French leaders to propose legislation combating this type of hate, as announced by French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu last month at CRIF’s annual gathering,
“To define oneself as anti-Zionist is to question Israel’s right to exist. It’s a call for the destruction of an entire people under the guise of ideology,” Lecornu said, announcing that the government would introduce a bill to criminalize anti-Zionism. “There is a difference between legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and rejecting the very existence of the Jewish state. This ‘blurring’ must stop.”
Lecornu declared that “hatred of Jews is hatred of the Republic and a stain on France.”