# Donald Trump — "a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about" > [!quote] "Kanye West very much wanted to visit Mar-a-Lago. Our dinner meeting was intended to be Kanye and me only, but he arrived with a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about." > — Donald Trump, Truth Social, November 25, 2022 > [!quote] "Also, I didn't know Nick Fuentes." > — Donald Trump, Truth Social, November 2022 (follow-up statement) ## Context On November 22, 2022 — days after launching his 2024 campaign — Trump hosted [[Kanye West]] and white nationalist / Holocaust denier [[Nick Fuentes]] at [[Mar-a-Lago]]. After the dinner drew bipartisan condemnation, Trump issued a series of Truth Social statements over several days distancing himself from Fuentes while never condemning him, claiming he hadn't known who Fuentes was. ## Why this matters **1. The canonical "I didn't know who he is" deflection.** This is the template move — the same structure as "I thought it was me as a doctor" (the [[Donald Trump - Jesus healer image]] cycle) and his past disavowals of retweeted white nationalists. The disavowal is of *knowledge*, never of the *person or the ideas* — leaving the association intact while making criticism deniable. The operating logic is [[Kayfabe]]. **2. Non-condemnation is the signal.** Across every statement Trump declined to denounce Fuentes or his views. For the [[Groyper Movement]] and the broader white-nationalist online right, the dinner-without-condemnation functioned as validation — the access itself was the message. ## Verification - **Wording**: "a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about" and "Also, I didn't know Nick Fuentes" — reproduced by CNN, NBC News, The Hill, Axios. - **Dinner date**: November 22, 2022, Mar-a-Lago; statements posted ~Nov 25 and the following days. - **Fuentes identity**: white nationalist and Holocaust denier (ADL, all major outlets). ## See also - [[Donald Trump - 2022-11-25 - Ye Fuentes dinner]] — paired Social Post entry - [[Nick Fuentes]] / [[Kanye West]] — the guests - [[Kayfabe]] — the deflection logic