Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is condemning white nationalist Nick Fuentes and defending former President Trump after a dinner he had with the rapper Kanye West, who now goes by Ye; Fuentes and provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.
She also reflected on her past interactions with Fuentes and Yiannopoulos, which have resurfaced in the aftermath of the dinner.
Greene spoke at a conference hosted by Fuentes earlier this year, and Yiannopoulos was an unpaid intern in her office this year.
In a conversation with reporters on Tuesday, Greene said that she agreed with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) statement on Friday that Fuentes’s views have “no place in the Republican Party.”
She said she spoke with Trump and talked with people on his staff after news of the dinner broke.
“President Trump had no idea he [Fuentes] was even coming. So that’s unfortunate,” Greene said.
She said that Trump’s team is making “big changes over who can come in and the vetting process, which I think is smart. Any former president should have that in place.”
Greene said that knowing what she knows now about Fuentes, she would not have spoken at his conference — but does not regret her message to those in the audience.
“I don’t regret talking to the kids that were there because I don’t understand why they follow him. But would I have gone to his event? No,” Greene said. “I’m worried about kids that would follow him. And that’s a shame. … But no, I don’t want to have anything to do with him.”
Greene said that before she spoke at the Fuentes event, her understanding was that it would be a group of 1,000 to 1,200 college students.
“My thinking was, of course I want to talk to these kids. And I gave, you know, the same speech I gave there as I would anywhere. I’m proud of the speech I gave there. It’s on video. I never said anything wrong,” Greene said.
“What I did find out is I saw some videos of his in the past week because I asked my staff, ‘Can you pull some videos? I don’t even know how to watch this guy,’” Greene said. “And they showed me some videos. I could not believe the stuff he says. I mean, it was shocking.”
Greene wondered who is funding Fuentes, and whether Ye is paying him.
Also present at the dinner with Trump was Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart editor who was banned from Twitter in 2016 in connection with a campaign of racist harassment against actress Leslie Jones. Yiannopoulos was an unpaid intern in Greene’s congressional office earlier this year.
“I talk to him [Yiannopoulos] occasionally because he actually lives in Rome [Ga.] in the same town I live in,” Greene said. “I had no idea they were going down there [to Mar-a-Lago]. And I found out about it, basically, like everybody else did on Twitter.”
In an appearance with YouTuber Tim Pool this week — before Ye walked off set after being challenged on his antisemitic views — Ye said that he got connected to Yiannopoulos through a producer for far-right radio host Alex Jones. Yiannopoulos said he then brought Fuentes in to join Ye’s fringe political entourage as the rapper plans a 2024 presidential bid.
An NBC News report on Tuesday said that Yiannopoulos, who said in 2020 that he felt “betrayed” by Trump and pledged “vengeance,” had “arranged the dinner ‘just to make Trump’s life miserable’ because news of the dinner would leak and Trump would mishandle it.”
Asked what she thought of the NBC report and the prospect that Yiannopoulos would try to make Trump look bad, Greene said: “I would hope not. I think that’s a shame.”
Greene has endorsed Trump for president in 2024.