- Newsweek: Presidents Shouldn't Dine With Monsters Archived Message
Posted by Morrissey
on December 4, 2022, 4:57 am
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https://www.newsweek.com/presidents-shouldnt-dine-monsters-opinion-1763979 The following is a lightly edited transcript of remarks made by Ellis Henican during a Newsweek debate about former President Trump's dinner with holocaust denier Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago. You can listen to the podcast here: This is part of the Trump coalition, isn't it? There's an audience for this hatred out there and a lot of people rally around it. Thank goodness it's not close to a majority, but it's part of the line. I'm going to be charitable. I'm inclined to accept Trump's explanation that he was punked by Kanye. He thought he was meeting Kanye, Kanye brings a couple of guys along, they don't check them out as carefully as they should have, and before you know it, there's a fire storm. Let's assume that's true. But, but what do you do if you find that you've been punked like that? You come out later and you say, "hey, I'm sorry. It's terrible that I sat down with those cretins, but I didn't realize they were, and I apologize, it won't happen again." Comp Image, Fuentes, Trump and His Supporters A combination image, Donald Trump, Nick Fuentes and Supporters of Trump hold flags outside Trump's Mar-A-Lago residence in West Palm Beach, Florida, November 15, 2022 Getty Sitting down with people like this makes good journalism, but bad presidency. I've spent my career talking to abhorrent people. Some of the best interviews I've ever done are with people I wouldn't invite home to dinner. That's what we do, but here's the difference: when a president sits down with a monster, it empowers the monster in a way that journalists don't. I'm not saying don't do it. I think it's fine to sit down with Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, but you've got to lay down a little bit of a predicate before you do it, otherwise you empower them. This dinner at Mar-a-Lago also put mainstream Republican politicians in a really uncomfortable position because they don't wanna denounce Trump, not knowing whether he's really a wounded animal who's not going to survive. They don't want to back him because that might come back to haunt them. Chris Christie came out quick, and then that was pretty much it for a few days. Even now, all these days later, you're still get a lot of lukewarm criticisms without naming anybody and trying to be polite about the whole thing from the sidelines. That was fun to watch. Ellis Henican is a New York Times-bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own. https://www.france24.com/en/20100322-biden-will-host-dinner-with-netanyahu-defuse-settlement-row https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-bill-clinton-in-saudi-arabia-meets-with-king-2010apr07-story.html |
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