That doesn’t work at all Half a million dollars under the pillow of the sofa: the president of South Africa needs an explanation

In English there is the expression pearl-clutching, to grab the string of pearls. It describes the feigned disgust of a person who – help! – is extremely shocked by a fact she has known for a long time.

What the US Republicans are currently doing when it comes to Donald Trump can be described as mother of pearl. The former US president met with Ye and Nick Fuentes for dinner at his Florida residence last Tuesday. Ye, once one of the most successful rappers of the moment under the name Kanye West, now mainly spreads anti-Semitic conspiracy lies and threats. Fuentes is a 24-year-old largely unknown outside the right-wing scene, who denies the Holocaust in Internet videos and was present at the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

It took nearly a week for prominent Republicans to comment on the issue. Former Vice President Mike Pence was one of the clearest: “It was wrong of President Trump to seat a white nationalist, anti-Semite, and Holocaust denier at his table.” Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson called the meeting “deeply disturbing.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said it was “highly unlikely” that such a person would run for president again: “There is no place in the Republican Party for anti-Semitism or white supremacy”.

From tolerance to courtship

oops! Isn’t this the same Trump who in 2017 said of Hitler-saling neo-Nazis in Charlottesville – the rally where a counter-demonstrator was killed and Fuentes also participated – that “very fine people” had marched there? The same Trump who for years claimed that Jewish philanthropist George Soros was behind an alleged “Antifa” luring migrants across the border from Mexico? The same Trump who gave far-right demagogue Steve Bannon a White House office and moved in recent months from endorsing the anti-Semitic QAnon movement among his supporters to openly courting?

Trump normalized anti-Semitism as well as racism and sexism before, during and after his presidency. That is the obvious goal of people like Ye, which is why such a networking meeting is not only despicable, it is also deadly dangerous.

But even apart from Trump as a person, Jew-hatred and right-wing hate speech do have a place in the Republican Party, you only have to see who is ahead of them in the House of Representatives. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who spoke at a conference hosted by Fuentes earlier this year, is notorious for making anti-Semitic statements (for example, she claimed that wildfires in California were ignited by a laser controlled by the Rothschild family). In the new Congress, which meets in January with a Republican majority, she has a good chance of winning important committee posts.

For example, when Fuentes rants on his Telegram channel that Jews have too much power in American society and that power should be reserved only for Christians, then – New York Times author Michelle Goldberg argues – he is only articulating more openly and aggressively what one otherwise hears as murmurs about Trump’s “globalists” and “elites” and circles close to him. That didn’t bother the party leadership, if they didn’t adopt this rhetoric anyway. And so far, a close relationship with the likes of Fuentes has had no serious consequences: Greene was warned by the party against attending the conference, but was not punished.

But it is also striking which of the Republican Party is now outraged at Trump molding a pearl necklace: Pence and Hutchinson are considered to be interested in a presidential candidacy in 2024, McConnell has long been trying to get the Republicans back on track without Trump. Trump used to get away with everything, but now the major Republican donors are turning their backs on him, and apparently many female voters as well.

The fact that prominent Republicans are suddenly criticizing Trump in an unusually clear way (after initially taking days off) suggests less moral motives than power-political motives: he is no longer untouchable as he used to be, most Republican voters like it – the Midterms have demonstrated that – then rather not so extreme. And so any chance to move away from the extremism they’ve tolerated for so long is welcome for the Republicans.

It is significant who is silent: the majority. One of them is Ron DeSantis, Trump’s biggest competitor for a possible presidential nomination in 2024. Although the meeting took place in his state of Florida, he has not spoken about it so far. He knows very well that if he wants to win against Trump, he will also have to win over his most loyal fans, so a confrontation would rather be an obstacle. Many Republican representatives in Congress have still not commented and have not responded to corresponding questions from the US media, presumably for similar reasons.

The method: distract

And then there are statements like that of Kevin McCarthy, Republican leader in the House of Representatives. He chose the method Republicans used before the 2016 election when Trump had said something despicable: distract. He did not condemn the former president himself, but Fuentes, whose “ideology” had no place in society.

Trump himself claims that he only dated Ye and didn’t know the other guy at all, which is hard to believe. At the same time, a rumor was circulating from Mar-a-Lago that bringing Fuentes was a trap to impeach Trump for scandal. Like it’s fine to invite one anti-Semite – yes – but two? Trump, who realizes that he can no longer afford everything, does not want this intention.

And he gets away with it again. In any case, Republicans are only too happy to accept the theory of deception. Trump is certainly not an anti-Semite, even Pence finally says: But he has shown “extremely poor judgment.” Ultimately, the former vice president also wants to win elections and, like DeSantis, he could only fight Trump with renegade Trump voters. Apparently he does not want to alienate them more than necessary to become the sincere fighter against hatred and extremism towards the center.

Trump is not just the same as six years ago. The mendacity of his party has not changed either.

This article was first published on Zeit Online. Watson may have changed the headings and subheadings. Here’s the original.