Chicago Sun-Times (Sunday)

Trump slammed for dinner with Holocaust denier, rapper Ye

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NEW YORK — Just days into his third campaign for the White House, former President Donald Trump admitted dining with a Holocaust-denying white nationalis­t and the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who has made his own series of antisemiti­c comments in recent weeks.

Trump had dinner Tuesday at his Mar-aLago club with West, who is now known as Ye, as well as Nick Fuentes, a far-right activist who has used his online platform to spew antisemiti­c and white nationalis­t rhetoric.

Trump, in a series of statements Friday, said he had “never met and knew nothing about” Fuentes before he arrived with Ye at his club. But Trump also did not acknowledg­e Fuentes’ long history of racist and antisemiti­c remarks, nor did he denounce either man’s defamatory statements.

Ye first shared details of the dinner in a video he posted to his Twitter account Thursday. Ye said he had traveled to Florida to ask Trump to be his 2024 running mate, and that the meeting had grown heated, with Trump “perturbed” by his request and Ye angered by Trump’s criticism of his estranged wife, Kim Kardashian.

The meeting drew immediate criticism from Trump critics as well as some supporters, including David Friedman, who served as Trump’s ambassador to Israel.

“To my friend Donald Trump, you are better than this. Even a social visit from an antisemite like Kanye West and human scum like Nick Fuentes is unacceptab­le,” Friedman wrote in a tweet.

U.S. eases oil sanctions on Venezuela

MEXICO CITY — Venezuela’s government and its opposition on Saturday agreed to create a U.N.-managed fund to finance health, food and education programs for the poor, while the Biden administra­tion eased some oil sanctions on the country in an effort to boost the newly restarted talks between the sides.

The agreement signed in Mexico City by representa­tives of President Nicolás Maduro and the opposition, including the faction backed by the United States and led by Juan Guaidó, marked the resumption of long-stalled negotiatio­ns meant to find a common path out of the South American country’s complex crisis. The U.S. government, in response, agreed to allow oil giant Chevron to pump Venezuelan oil.

FCC bans sales, import of Chinese tech

WASHINGTON — The U.S. is banning the sale of communicat­ions equipment made by Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE and restrictin­g the use of some China-made video surveillan­ce systems, citing an “unacceptab­le risk” to national security.

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