Sometimes words fail me. As a writer, it happens thankfully rarely. But when I heard that Trump had dinner with the likes of Kanye West, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Nick Fuentes, I was speechless. This was over the top, even for Trump.

His public defense that he didn’t know who Fuentes was is an obvious lie. Trump commands his surroundings and holds loyalty above all. All three of those individuals have been loyal to Trump, which says a bunch about the lot of them. Thus slavish sucking up was Fuentes’ entrance pass.

But dear God, couldn’t it have been a private lunch of takeout from the local McDonald’s? Was Trump looking for trouble? Well, he found it. Is he that much of an attention whore? Yes. For there is no other explanation for the meeting.

To give Trump post-event credit, he said after the soiree that West was “a seriously troubled man.” Then why was he giving him a further forum and publicly associating with him?

Even West’s friends in entertainment say the guy is off the meds he takes for his bipolar issues and that’s the cause of his recent antisemitism and other assorted inanities including supposedly running for president in ’24. Either Trump is exploiting him for his political circus geek value or he thinks West is on to something. Either option doesn’t exactly put Trump in a good light.

Kanye later said, “I think the thing Trump was most perturbed about [was] me asking him to be my vice president. I think that was lower on the list of things that caught him off guard.” Whoa. To have been there for that moment.

And Milo Yiannopoulos? He’s a caricature of a political pundit. Gay, or not, alt-right, or not, like Trump he seems to crave the spotlight above all things. Apparently now he’s also the campaign manager for the Kanye West presidential effort. I will admit, Milo can be amusing. Has he taken on this gig for the comic mischief potential?

Whatever his motivation, Milo’s penchant for provocation does not make him the perfect dinner partner for a presidential candidate. Trump knows that. However, Milo’s obsequious devotion to Trump, a devotion that has occasionally strayed into romantic fantasies, means more to Trump than the hit on his judgment.

Fuentes is the real prize of the group. A bigot, an incel (probably unintentionally), an anti-semite, and an authoritarian, he takes a legitimate defense of the West and morphs it into a repulsive mixture of historical revisionism and pure venom.

He was one of the idiots who encouraged the hayseed riot at the Capitol on J6 and regularly harasses conservatives like Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro because he believes “the GOP is run by Jews, atheists, and homosexuals.” He must mean those gay Jewish atheists like Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell. After the dinner West said Trump “was very impressed with Nick Fuentes.” Hard to judge the veracity of that, as West is a babbling loon.

Yup, these are the kind of people Trump invites over for dinner and a chin wag. A scheduler was responsible? Trump employs a scheduler that incompetent? Regardless of the reason, Trump again stepped in it. It won’t be the last time he does so before the big game is afoot.

In the final analysis, Mitch McConnell put it best, “There is no room in the Republican Party for antisemitism or white supremacy. And anyone meeting with people advocating that point of view, in my judgment, is highly unlikely to ever be elected president of the United States.” Just so. At least, ever be elected again.