Late last year, Donald Trump had dinner with a couple of Hitler fanboys, a dinner he was so honored to host that he greeted it with great pomp and made sure it was in full view of the regular guests in the dining room of Mar-a-Lago. One of the Hitler apologists was rapper Kanye West, whose recent turn to the far right appears related to his well-documented severe mental health issues. The other Hitler admirer, Nick Fuentes, is a well-known incel troll and the head of the fascist America First group. Trump's efforts to spin his dinner after the fact were limp even by his standards, saying he didn't know who Fuentes was, a claim roughly no one believed. Sadly, as Heather "Digby" Parton correctly predicted at Salon, none of this has made a dent in Trump's status in the GOP. If anything, Republican voters keep rallying to his side, predictably pleased that Nazi-snuggling has the liberal-triggering effect they crave.
This likely answers the question posited by Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC show Monday night: How is it that Trump's son, Eric Trump, and a number of other figures in the Trump orbit "are going ahead with" an event this weekend that prominently features Hitler-friendly speakers? As Maddow pointed out, both MSNBC and Media Matters have spent "months" highlighting this event, scheduled for May 12 and 13 at the Trump National Doral resort in Miami. But, after Trump's famous dinner with Hitler apologists, he and his people seem to have decided there's no political downside to being seen rubbing shoulders with the Mein Kampf crowd.
