Outgoing Wyoming Republican Representative Liz Cheney took to Twitter to call out current GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for his silence on former Republican President Donald Trump's recent dinner with avowed White nationalist and antisemitic Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
Fuentes rose to prominence after attending the violent 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and has since become a leader of the so-called "Groyper army."
He helped plan multiple "Stop the Steal" rallies that led to the January 6 coup attempt last year. He recently called for Trump to be installed in a "dictatorship" to "force the people to believe what we believe" after this year's midterms and for elections to then be abolished.
Presumably to that end, he and Trump dined together along with rapper Ye just before Thanksgiving following the former President's announcement of his 2024 campaign launch in a new level of open commitment to virulently racist and antisemitic fascism by the former Republican President.
Most Republicans declined to speak out about the meeting. For his part, Trump claimed he did not know who Fuentes was prior to the dinner even if no one is buying Trump's story.
In a tweet posted this morning, Cheney referred to Fuentes as a "neo-Nazi" and excoriated McCarthy for staying silent on the matter.
Tagging McCarthy's Twitter account, Cheney wrote:
"Hey @GOPLeader—where is your condemnation of Donald Trump for meeting with neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, the pro-Putin leader of the America First Political Action Conference?"
"I know you want to be Speaker, but are you willing to be completely amoral?"
McCarthy's silence also constitutes a 180 reversal on his previous position on the America First Political Action Conference and those affiliated with it.
After Republican Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar spoke at the white nationalist event, McCarthy condemned their participation, calling it "unacceptable" and saying there is "no place" for anti-Semitism in the Republican Party.
Since Cheney's tweet, McCarthy spoke to the press about Trump's dinner with Fuentes.
He told reporters:
“I condemn [Fuentes'] ideology. It has no place in society — at all."
McCarthy also claimed, falsely, Trump also condemned Fuentes before reiterating the former President's claim he didn't know who Fuentes was.
On Twitter, many shared Cheney's anger about the dinner.
And they did not find McCarthy's subsequent comments about the dinner at all convincing.
While most Republicans have stayed silent on the matter, former Republican Vice President Mike Pence, Republican Utah Senator Mitt Romney and Republican Kentucky Representative James Comer, likely the next chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, have also condemned Trump for meeting with Fuentes.
