Conservative influencer Nick Fuentes, who has refused to endorse Donald Trump in his 2024 presidential campaign, said Friday that the former president’s supporters dressing in garbage bags made him realize that “it is a cult.”
In his Friday night episode of America First, Fuentes referenced Trump’s October 30 rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, when the former president climbed into a garbage truck in an effort to play on President Joe Biden‘s remark from the day before.
Biden faced backlash after a clip of his call Tuesday with Voto Latino was circulated online, where he was heard saying, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters—his—his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”
The president’s remark followed comedian Tony Hinchliffe’s comment at a Trump rally in Madison Square Garden in New York City where he called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” The White House told Newsweek on Tuesday that Biden was referring to the rhetoric at Trump’s rally and not those who vote for him. Officials also shared a transcript of Biden’s call that included an apostrophe on “supporter’s.”
However, the transcript was altered by White House press officials, according to a report from the Associated Press on Friday.
Biden’s remarks have fueled Trump’s recent rally rhetoric and how some supporters’ dress.
“At the Trump rallies they’re yelling ‘trash for Trump, trash for Trump,” Fuentes said on Friday, adding that some attendees have even started dressing up as trash. Dozens of Trump supporters, including Donald Trump Jr. and Megyn Kelly, posted photos on social media of them being “trash” for Halloween.
“That was the moment when I realized Trumpism was a cult, that was the moment when I realized liberals are right. That was the moment when I realized it has gone too far, it is Frankenstein’s monster, we’ve created a Gollum. It is a problem.”
He said, “It is a cult,” later referring to Trumpism as “a giant cult-like scam.” Fuentes noted that there is a “slavish devotion of the [Trump] followers, they’ll just eat up anything.”
Newsweek has reached out to Fuentes for comment via X, formerly Twitter, messaging and Trump’s campaign via email on Saturday evening.
Fuentes is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a “white nationalist livestreamer who advocates pulling the Republican Party further to the extreme far-right” and an “admirer of fascists.” He was previously a supporter of Trump and was a vocal ally during the “Stop the Steal” movement following Trump’s loss to Biden in 2020.
In 2022, Trump faced widespread criticism for a dinner he had with rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, and Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. The former president defended himself, saying at the time that he “knew nothing about” Fuentes before the dinner.
Later during the episode, Fuentes said of Trump supporters dressing up as trash, “That’s actually a bad look. It’s negative; it’s sad and pathetic. Why would you dress up as garbage? And think about the connotations. Trump is a populist, he’s for the people…isn’t that what the elites already think about us? Don’t they think we’re garbage? Don’t they think we’re dirty and poor and part of this mob and then we go and put a trash bag on and become a caricature of that? Isn’t that kind of humiliating?”
Fuentes is among several conservative influencers and activists who once supported Trump but are now refusing to endorse him. On Friday night, Richard Spencer publicly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats down the ballot in Montana. In a phone interview with Newsweek on Saturday morning, he said Democrats are “more competent” than the GOP.
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