The GOP’s fake outrage over Donald Trump and his dinner guests

As conflict continues to roil America’s political landscape, we can be assured of one thing: The radical right will not go away quietly.

Some Republican counties in Pennsylvania and Arizona have refused to certify the midterm election results after Democrats outperformed expectations. The GOP-controlled Pennsylvania House approved and sent to the Senate articles of impeachment against reform-minded prosecutor Larry Krasner, effectively undermining the will of voters in a city where nearly half the residents are Black. Election deniers are filing lawsuits in support of defeated gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano. And Donald Trump, the man who unleashed a violent mob in an attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power, is once again running for president.

Still, there are signs that America is rejecting the politics of hate. Stewart Rhodes, founder of a right-wing militia group called the Oath Keepers, was convicted of seditious conspiracy for helping to plan and carry out a violent plot to keep Trump in office. The U.S. Senate passed legislation to uphold gay and interracial marriage. Voters across the country rejected the vast majority of candidates who campaigned on Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 presidential election.

Republican politicians can see which way the wind is blowing, and they are backing away from extreme positions like a nationwide abortion ban. Even more remarkable, GOP leaders are doing the unthinkable: They are denouncing Donald Trump for sitting down to dinner with the white supremacist Nick Fuentes.

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Fuentes ate dinner with the former president at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West. According to the Anti-Defamation League, Fuentes has been quoted on his America First podcast making antisemitic comments, denying that the Holocaust ever happened, and saying that “the Founders never intended for America to be a refugee camp for nonwhite people.”

Those kinds of statements, uttered aloud, are apparently too much for Republican leaders. Perhaps that is why Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who’s considering a run for president himself, told CNN: “I don’t think it’s a good idea for a leader that’s setting an example for the country or the party to meet with an avowed racist or antisemite. … We need to avoid empowering the extremes. … You want to diminish their strength, not empower them. Stay away from them.”

Maybe the sheer offense of Fuentes’ openly sharing his bigotry was enough to make Congressman James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, tell NBC’s Meet the Press that Trump needed to exercise “better judgment” when it comes to dining companions.

Even former Vice President Mike Pence, who was targeted by Trump’s mob on Jan. 6, spoke up about the controversy.

“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,” Pence told News Nation, before adding: “With that being said, as I point out in the book as well, I don’t believe Donald Trump is an antisemite. I don’t believe he’s a racist or a bigot.”

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And that is why I don’t believe for one second that the Republican outrage over Trump’s dinner with a white supremacist is real.

If Mike Pence can say with a straight face that he doesn’t believe Trump is a bigot, I can’t take him seriously. Not when Trump sent Confederate-flag-wielding, racist-slur-spewing militia members to the U.S. Capitol chanting “Hang Mike Pence!”

In fact, I can’t take any of this Republican indignation seriously. Not when the same GOP lawmakers who now condemn Trump over a dinner said nothing when he allegedly incited a violent insurrection that was planned and carried out by the leaders of a right-wing militia.

These same GOP leaders were eerily silent when Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” of the racist violence that took place in Charlottesville, Va., over a Confederate monument. They were complicit when Trump put a Muslim ban in place that targeted people of color. They cheered when Trump took aim at Latinos with his chants of “Build that wall!”

The Republicans who now denounce Trump for a dinner are the very same ones who pander to white supremacists at election time and use the votes of bigots to stay in office.