Welcome back to State of the Union. Former President Trump is attempting to defend a meal he shared this week with rapper Kanye West, who now goes by Ye, and white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
Trump insisted Friday that he hadn't previously known Fuentes, but a source tells CNN he found the white supremacist quote, very interesting, particularly Fuentes's ability to rattle off statistics and data and his familiarity with the Trump world.
Here. With me now is Arkansas Republican governor ASA Hutchinson, who is considering challenging Donald Trump for the 2024 GOP nomination. Governor, thank you so much for joining me. I know, as a US attorney in Arkansas, you prosecuted white supremacist groups.
What's your reaction to seeing a former US president associate with someone like that? Well, I hope someday we won't have to be responding to what former President Trump has said or done in this instance, it's important to respond.
And as you mentioned, the last time I met with a white supremacist, it was in an armed standoff. I had a bulletproof vest on. We arrested them, prosecuted and sent them to prison. And so, no, I don't think it's a good idea for a leader that's setting an example for the country or the party to meet with a vowed racist or antisemite.
And so it's very troubling and it shouldn't happen. And we need to avoid those kinds of empowering, the extremes. And when you meet with people, you empower them. And that's what you have to avoid. You want to diminish their strength, not empower them.
Stay away from it. Judy Trump has released multiple statements. What he's doing is he's denying knowing Nick Fuentes, but he's not condemning his views, let alone condemning Kanye s history of antisemitic comments.
Recent history. So it's a pattern. Well, I mean, you can have accidental meetings. Things like that happened. This was not an accidental meeting. It was a set-up dinner with Kanye, and so this happened.
But you certainly have every occasion that the question of white supremacy or neo-Naziism or denying the Holocaust comes up, you've got to be clear in your communication that this is not acceptable dogma, it's not an acceptable conversation, it's not acceptable history, and you have to disavow it.
It is as simple as that. And I'm very proud of the Republican Jewish coalition. The former ambassador, US. Ambassador in the Trump administration to Israel has condemned this. And so what Donald Trump did in his failure to condemn it is the minority of the party.
It's the extreme side of it. And that's what you've got to distance yourself from. And he failed to do that. You told CNN you are very seriously looking at running for president in 2024. You're going to give a speech this week at the Reagan Library, and I want to show our viewers an excerpt of what you plan to say about why Republicans didn't do as well as they had hoped in the midterms.
Here's a quote from the speech you'll give historically. Republicans do not attack America's democracy. Republicans do not denigrate our political system, republicans do not undermine confidence in America, and Republicans do not attack those institutions that are fundamental to the rule of law.
What makes you think your party is ready to hear that now? Well, what preceded that quote, and that's absolute what I intend to say in part of my remarks to the Reagan Institute. But I also pointed out that this last midterm election, we had a red wave in Iowa.
We had a red wave. It was just individual candidates that were disavowed and lost. And those were those that did what I just recited. They didn't do stick with Republican principles. They got into election-denying and undermining democracy, and they were held accountable for that.
That's okay. But we did have an election in which Republican principles were not disavowed. Republican principles didn't lose. They were embraced. It's just that individual candidates strayed from those.
And so the Republican Party is in a good position coming out of the midterm elections. Not one incumbent Republican governor lost as they ran for reelection this last time. These are good signs of the party.
Let's just stick with the principles. I'm delighted to say Ronald Reagan set a good example for us, and I'm looking forward to making those remarks at the Reagan Institute this week. Many of your potential 2024 rivals were once staunch Trump allies.
People like Mike Pence, of course. His vice president, Mike Pompeo. His secretary of state, Chris Christie. Nikki Haley. What's your reaction to seeing them now criticizing Trump, trying to position themselves as Trump alternatives?
I just want to say that you have positioned yourself like that pretty much from the start, coming on the show many times. Well, I think it is the right thing to do, and it is, to me, predictable. That is what we need, as you see.
The party moving away from Donald Trump as you see us understanding the cost of the last midterm election, that we can't have candidates that win a primary but lose November. You can't have a candidate that can't attract suburban voters and independents.
And so everyone has recognized that not so. I applaud vice president pence of the others that you mentioned, Chris Christie, that's been very outspoken. We need more of those voices, not fewer. And I expect those voices to increase.
And it shouldn't be in a harsh tone. It should be in a voice of reality that this is exactly where we are as a party and where we need to go to reach out to those independents and expand the base of the party and move beyond the Trump era.
Governor, after five people were killed at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado last week, you urged your fellow Republicans to tone down the rhetoric, particularly towards the trans community. But just days after that shooting, Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker debuted this ad, I Want to Play, and it targets transgender athletes.
For more than a decade, I worked so hard for an m. Practice to be the best, but in my senior year, I was forced to compete against a biological male. That's unfair and wrong. A man won the swimming title that belonged to a woman, and Senator Warnock voted to let it happen.
Are you comfortable with what Walker is doing there? I am. I signed a law in Arkansas that prohibited biological males from competing with women and women's sports. To me, it's about the tone and the broader arena.
We also passed a hate law in Arkansas. We shouldn't be targeting. Anyone because of their race or their gender. We also have to speak compassionately and have an understanding heart. And so these are difficult issues that we're dealing with as a society, and it's fair to debate and discuss.
But what about the timing there said, that's a fair question, but it happens. To be in the middle. Of an election and you can hardly pull everything down. That's a fair question. But the substantive issue is on the hearts and minds of people, and you've got to be able to talk about it, state your position on it, and you've got to recognize that these sensitive issues have to be dealt with by parents, by school officials, by employers as well.
And what happened at the nightclub is a human tragedy. And we all have to be able to express ourselves with compassion toward that understanding. And we need to work through this as a society. These are challenging issues, and what happened is just simply wrong.