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Trump’s dinner with a Holocaust denier draws rare criticism from some of his Jewish allies
(JTA) — Two weeks after feting Donald Trump as America’s most pro-Israel president ever, the Zionist Organization of America had harsh words for the man who aspires to return to the White House.
“ZOA deplores the fact that President Trump had a friendly dinner with such vile antisemites,” ZOA said Sunday in a news release. “His dining with Jew-haters helps legitimize and mainstream antisemitism and must be condemned by everyone.”
The group was referring to Trump’s dinner last week with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West who came out as an antisemite in recent weeks, and Nick Fuentes, the right-wing provocateur and Holocaust denier. Trump hosted the pair at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, on Tuesday.
Reaction to the dinner was initially muted in the days before Thanksgiving, but over the long weekend, a host of figures denounced Trump for meeting with the two men, though some did so more strongly or explicitly than others. Among Jews, the criticism has come not only from Trump’s longtime detractors but from some of his biggest fans.
“To my friend Donald Trump, you are better than this,” David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, said Friday on Twitter. “Even a social visit from an antisemite like Kanye West and human scum like Nick Fuentes is unacceptable.”
Friedman is rarely anything but effusive in praising Trump, whom he once said would join the “small cadre of Israeli heroes” for moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights and exiting the Iran nuclear deal, among other measures. But on Friday, his tone was more pleading as he tweeted to Trump: “I urge you to throw those bums out, disavow them and relegate them to the dustbin of history where they belong.”
Trump for his part said in statements on his Truth Social social media site that he hoped to assist Ye, whom he described as “troubled,” and that he did not know who Fuentes was. (Ye said he had come to Mar-a-Lago to ask Trump to be his running mate in his own nascent campaign.)
“We got along great, he expressed no antisemitism and I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson,’” Trump said of Ye, referring to a Fox News opinion show hosted by Carlson, whose embrace of an antisemitic conspiracy theory has led the Anti-Defamation League to call for his removal. “Why wouldn’t I agree to meet? Also, I didn’t know Nick Fuentes.”
The response was reminiscent of Trump’s swatting-away of criticism after he told the Proud Boys, a far-right group whose founder had made antisemitic comments, to “stand back and stand by” during a presidential debate in 2020, in response to being asked to condemn white supremacists from the debate stage. He subsequently said he did not know who the Proud Boys were. (The group later rebranded as explicitly antisemitic.)
Trump’s contention that he did not know Fuentes raised eyebrows for some. Like the Proud Boys, Fuentes is part of the extremist fringe of the Republican Party that has made up part of Trump’s base. The founder of a white nationalist group called America First, he was a leading organizer of the “Stop the Steal” rallies organized by Trump supporters to try to overturn the election results showing that he lost in 2020; he was also present at the rally that Trump addressed preceding the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that aimed to derail the transition of power.
Fuentes, who routinely rails against Jews on his livestream, also attended the 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Trump famously said there were “very fine people on both sides” and more recently has grown close to far-right lawmakers in Trump’s party, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia and Rep. Paul Gosar in Arizona.
Nick Fuentes answers question during an interview with Agence France-Presse in Boston, May 9, 2016. (William Edwards/AFP via Getty Images)
But even those who took Trump at his word that he did not previously know Fuentes said that was little excuse for dining with him.
“A good way not to accidentally dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you don’t know is not to dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you do know,” the Jewish right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro tweeted on Sunday. (Shapiro’s tweet kicked off a heated exchange with Ye, who recently returned to Twitter as the social media platform’s new owner, Elon Musk, restores many accounts that were suspended for violating the site’s old rules, including Trump’s.)
Reaction to the dinner kept Trump in the spotlight over the course of a holiday weekend, a double-edged sword for the first Republican to declare a 2024 presidential campaign. Trump’s rise was fueled by nonstop media coverage, including of seeming misdeeds that did not doom him with his supporters. Still, one Trump advisor told NBC News that the event was a “f—ing nightmare” for the campaign, which has gotten off to a rocky start.
Also condemning the meeting were Jewish organizations that have not hesitated to criticize Trump’s flirtation with extremists in the past, including the American Jewish Committee, the Reform movement of Judaism and the Anti-Defamation League.
The Biden White House also condemned the incident. “Bigotry, hate, and anti-Semitism have absolutely no place in America, including at Mar-a-Lago,” its statement said. ”Holocaust denial is repugnant and dangerous, and it must be forcefully condemned.” (Asked to comment on Trump saying he didn’t know Fuentes, Biden himself told a reporter, “You don’t want to hear what I think.”)
The White House’s statement did not name Trump, nor did statements from many Republicans, including the Republican Jewish Coalition, at whose annual conference Trump spoke last week. The group did not initiate a statement, but, in response to reporters’ queries, released one.
“We strongly condemn the virulent antisemitism of Kanye West and Nick Fuentes and call on all political leaders to reject their messages of hate and refuse to meet with them,” said the statement, first solicited by The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman. The RJC and its CEO, Matt Brooks, retweeted Haberman.
Why the RJC would not name Trump drew follow-up questions from reporters, including Haberman, as well as a barrage of criticism on social media.
Brooks, evidently stung, called such queries “dumb and short-sighted” on Sunday morning and said on Twitter by way of explanation, “We didn’t mention Trump in our RJC statement even though it’s obviously in response to his meeting because we wanted it to be a warning to ALL Republicans. Duh!”
White nationalist leader Nick Fuentes addresses his livestream audience on the day Roe v. Wade is struck down to attack Jews on the Supreme Court, June 24, 2022. (Screenshot)
Max Miller, a Jewish Republican just elected to Congress from Ohio, and a former wingman for Trump, also did not name Trump and instead appealed to Ye, who at least until recently had become cherished on the right as a Black Christian conservative, to make a course correction.
“Nick Fuentes is unquestionably an anti-Semite and a Holocaust denier. His brand of hate has no place in our public discourse,” Miller said on Twitter. Ye “doesn’t need to keep walking this path. Letting people like Nick Fuentes into his life is a mistake.”
Prominent Jewish Republicans not making statements included David Kustoff, a Tennessee Jewish Republican congressman; Jason Greenblatt, once a top Middle East adviser to Trump; and Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, who were both top advisers to Trump when he was president. A spokesman for Kushner did not reply to a request for comment.
Lee Zeldin, the Jewish Republican New York congressman seen as having a future in the GOP leadership after performing more strongly than expected in a failed bid to be elected governor of a Democratic state, also did not issue a statement, and his spokesman did not reply to a request for comment. Zeldin has otherwise been outspoken on Jewish issues in Congress and co-chairs the U.S. House of Representatives Black-Jewish caucus.
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who is the only Black Republican in the Senate and who co-chairs its Black-Jewish caucus, also had not commented as of Sunday night. Scott is believed to be a 2024 presidential hopeful and
Other Republican leaders denounced extremism but did not call out Trump by name. Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman known for her closeness to the former president, like the RJC, replied only when asked by a reporter — in her case, from Bloomberg — and did not name Trump.
“As I had repeatedly said, white supremacy, neo-Nazism, hate speech, and bigotry are disgusting and do not have a home in the Republican Party,” McDaniel said.
Meanwhile, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo condemned antisemitism — but without mentioning Trump, Fuentes, Ye or any of the forms of antisemitism they have expressed. Instead, Pompeo spoke of his own role in undermining the boycott Israel movement — a cause that none of the men who dined together has embraced.
“Anti-Semitism is a cancer. As Secretary, I fought to ban funding for anti-Semitic groups that pushed BDS,” Pompeo said on Twitter. “We stand with the Jewish people in the fight against the world’s oldest bigotry.”
Trump was the ghost in the Republican machine last weekend at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual conference in Las Vegas: the declared candidate who party leaders believe still commands the unswerving loyalty of at least a third of the base. With his capacity for lashing out at critics, taking on Trump directly is seen as a fool’s game by many in the party.
A handful of Republicans already known for their open criticism of Trump, including Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, did denounce him by name.
“This is just awful, unacceptable conduct from anyone, but most particularly from a former President and current candidate,” Christie tweeted on Friday.
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Jewish Advocacy Groups Sue California Over K-12 Antisemitism
Students from Encinal High School and St. Joseph Notre Dame High School in Alameda, California, participating in anti-Israel demonstration on Jan 26. 2024: Photo: Michael Ho Wai Lee / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
A coalition of leading Jewish advocacy organizations is suing the state of California for allegedly failing to address “systemic” antisemitic discrimination in K-12 public schools.
Led by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and StandWithUs, the legal action stems from consecutive years of antisemitic abused perpetrated against Jewish students, parents, and teachers by anti-Zionists at every level of the school system. Court documents shared with The Algemeiner earlier this week revealed new, harrowing accusations of Jews being called “k—kes,” Jewish students being threatened with gang assaults, and K-12 students chanting “F—k the Jews” during anti-Israel demonstrations promoted by faculty.
In one highly disturbing incident described in the legal complaint, fifth graders from the Oakland Unified School District were filmed by the teacher saying “Another major thing that I’ve learned is that the Jews, the people who took over, basically just stole the Palestinians’ land” and “one thing that’s really surprising to me, and that appeals to me is that the US is helping the Jews.” In another incident, the Oakland Education Association confected a curriculum in which the intifada — two prolonged periods of terrorism in which Palestinians murdered Israeli civilians — was taught to third graders as a nursery rhyme.
“The California education system is teaching the state’s children that Jewish Americans and Israelis are racists, white supremacists, oppressors, and baby-killers who should be shunned,” Brandeis Center chairman and former US assistant secretary of education for civil rights Kenneth Marcus said in a statement on Thursday. “The result is not surprising: Jewish children and children perceived as Jewish are bullied and excluded by their peers and harassed by their teachers, who silence, mock, and even segregate them if they speak out. School officials have done little or nothing at all to help these children.”
Litigation related to antisemitic incidents in California K-12 schools surged following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, which triggered a barrage of antisemitic hate crimes throughout the US and the world. The list of outrages includes a student group chanting “Kill the Jews” during an anti-Israel protest and partisan activists smuggling far-left, anti-Zionist content into classrooms without clearing the content with parents and other stakeholders.
Elsewhere in California, K-12 antisemitism has caused severe psychological trauma to Jewish students as young as eight years old and fostered a hostile learning environment, according to complaints
In the Berkeley United School District (BUSD), teachers have allegedly used their classrooms to promote antisemitic stereotypes about Israel, weaponizing disciplines such as art and history to convince unsuspecting minors that Israel is a “settler-colonial” apartheid state committing a genocide of Palestinians. While this took place, high level BUSD officials were accused of ignoring complaints about discrimination and tacitly approving hateful conduct even as it spread throughout the student body.
At Berkeley High School, for example, a history teacher forced students to explain why Israel is an apartheid state and screened an anti-Zionist documentary, according to a lawsuit filed last year by the Brandeis Center and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The teacher allegedly squelched dissent, telling a Jewish student who raised concerns about the content of her lessons that only anti-Zionist narratives matter in her classroom and that any other which argues that Israel isn’t an apartheid state is “laughable.” Elsewhere in the school, an art teacher, whose name is redacted from the complaint for matters of privacy, displayed anti-Israel artworks in his classroom, one of which showed a fist punching through a Star of David.
In September 2023, the Brandeis Center, along with the ADL and the American Jewish Committee (AJC), sued the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) in California for concealing from the public its adoption of ethnic studies curricula containing antisemitic and anti-Zionist themes. Then last February, the school district paused implementation of the program to settle the lawsuit. One month later, the Brandeis Center, StandWithUs, and the ADL filed a civil rights complaint accusing the Etiwanda School District in San Bernardino County, California, of doing nothing after a 12-year-old Jewish girl was assaulted, having been beaten with stick, on school grounds and teased with jokes about Adolf Hitler.
“Jews consistently are being targeted with hostility because of who they are, including in California and particularly in K-12 public schools. This lawsuit seeks to remedy that,” StandWithUs chief executive officer Roz Rothstein said in Thursday’s press release. “It is imperative that California K-12 schools not be co-opted by those seeking to indoctrinate students into antisemitic hate. However, Jewish students and parents indicate that this is precisely what is happening in California. Shockingly, those tasked with enforcing non-discrimination laws in our schools have failed to intervene effectively to put a stop to this growing problem.”
She added, “This lawsuit was necessitated by that systemic failure and seeks to ensure, going forward, that California’s Jewish students are protected and have access to an education free from discrimination.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Jewish Olympic Gold Medalist Jack Hughes Honored by New Jersey Devils as NHL Season Resumes
Jan 23, 2026; Vancouver, British Columbia, CAN; New Jersey Devils forward Jack Hughes (86) handles the puck against the Vancouver Canucks in the first period at Rogers Arena. Mandatory Photo: Bob Frid-Imagn Images via Reuters
Jewish Olympic hockey player Jack Hughes was honored by his team the New Jersey Devils on Wednesday night before their loss to the Buffalo Sabres in Newark.
Ahead of the game, the Devils showed on the Jumbotron a video of Hughes, 24, scoring the overtime goal that secured the United States its 2-1 victory and gold medal over Canada on Sunday in the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. Hughes lost a few teeth during the game when he took a high stick to the mouth from Canada’s Sam Bennett during the third period. The win marked the first time a US men’s hockey team had won gold at the Olympics since a 1980 victory against the former Soviet Union.
“I’m so proud and so happy that the men’s and women’s USA hockey teams brought gold medals back to America,” Hughes told the crowd in a pre-game speech on Wednesday given from the ice, while he held back tears. “And I’m so proud to represent the New Jersey Devils organization and to represent the great state of New Jersey. From the bottom of my heart, all of my [Team] USA teammates, we want to thank you for all the love and support. We feel it. Thank you.”
The Devils center — whose mother is Jewish while his father is Catholic — arrived in New Jersey late Tuesday night after US President Donald Trump recognized him and his Olympic teammates in the State of the Union address. Hughes played Wednesday night as Buffalo won for the seventh time in 10 games, 2-1, on goals from US Olympian Tage Thompson and Peyton Krebs. The NHL restarted its season on Wednesday after taking a break due to the Olympic Games in Milan.
On Thursday, before the New Jersey Devils took on the Pittsburgh Penguins at PPG Paints Arena, Hughes received a standing ovation as the Penguins honored athletes who represented their countries at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
Earlier in the week, the popular Hobby’s Delicatessen & Restaurant located blocks away from Newark’s Prudential Center, which is home to the New Jersey Devils, named a sandwich after Hughes. The owners said “Jack’s Golden Goal Sandwich,” which features roast beef and “golden sauteed onions” on a soft roll, is “so tender, you don’t need teeth.”
Trump announced during Tuesday night’s State of the Union that Connor Hellebuyck, the goaltender for the US men’s Olympic hockey team that won gold, will be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Hellebuyck made 41 saves in the Olympic game against Canada on Sunday and also assisted on the overtime goal by Hughes that led to the team’s gold medal win.
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Zachary Levi Hosts New Fox Nation Docu-Drama Series About King David
A scene from “David: King of Israel.” Photo: YouTube screenshot
Actor Zachary Levi hosts a Fox Nation original series that premiered on Thursday about the life and legacy of the Bible’s King David.
The four-part docu-drama “David: King of Israel” begins with the episode “The Shepherd,” which tells the story of David as a young shepherd in Bethlehem who kills a lion and a bear to protect his flock.
Episode two, “King of Israel,” premieres on March 5 and explores the aftermath of David’s fight with the giant Goliath, which is described in the Book of Samuel. The third episode will premiere on March 12, and the finale airs March 19. The series features reenactments about King David’s life and expert commentary intertwined with Levi’s narration.
Born in 907 BCE, David was chosen by God and anointed by the Prophet Samuel to one day be Israel’s new king. He reigned as the king of Israel for 40 years and is one of the most important figures in Jewish history. Christians also regard him as the ancestor of Jesus.
“Highlighting faith, redemption, and extraordinary purpose, we’re honored to bring this story to Fox Nation with Zachary at the helm,” said Fox Nation President Lauren Petterson about the four-part series.
“Aside from the account of Christ, the story of David is the most powerful in all of scripture,” added Levi. “In fact, one might argue that it’s even more powerful in some ways, given that David was fully human, and therefore flawed, like us, making his journey more relatable to our own. It’s a story I’ve wanted to be a part of telling ever since I was a child, so it was such a blessing being a part of this production.”
Levi, the “Shazam!” star, who is not Jewish, told “Fox & Friends” on Thursday he grew up in a Christian home and “reading my Bible and David was the story that always stood out to me as the most epic, the most amazing.”
“It can be difficult to relate to Jesus. David is us. David is a person who is called a man after God’s own heart,” he added. The actor, who has a SAG Award for his role in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” also said the four-part series is “like Lord of the Rings in the Bible.”
“You got giants and witches and all kinds of, you know, it’s cool and there’s massive battles, nation upon nation and good versus evil and all the spiritual elements of everything,” said Levi. “It’s a really fascinating story, even if you’re not within the Judeo-Christian lineage.”