Ye, white supremacist Fuentes among guests at dinner with Trump
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday had dinner with Nick Fuentes, an outspoken antisemite and racist who is one of the country’s most prominent young white supremacists, at Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, advisers to Trump conceded Friday.
Also at the dinner was performer Ye, who changed his name from Kanye West and has also been condemned for making antisemitic statements. Ye traveled to meet with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and brought Fuentes along, the advisers said.
The fourth attendee at the four-person dinner, Karen Giorno — a veteran political operative who worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign as his state director in Florida — also confirmed that Fuentes was there. Attempts to reach Fuentes through an intermediary Friday were unsuccessful.
In recent years, Fuentes, 24, has developed a high profile on the far right and forged ties with such Republican lawmakers as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, largely through his leadership of an annual white supremacist event called the America First Political Action Conference.
A Holocaust denier and unabashed racist, Fuentes openly uses hateful language on his podcast, in recent weeks calling for the military to be sent into Black neighborhoods and demanding that Jews leave the country.
It is unclear how much Trump knew of Fuentes’ well-documented bigotry and extremism before their dinner. In a statement, Trump said: “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.”
The statement said nothing about Fuentes’ views. In a post later Friday on his social media website, Truth Social, Trump said that Ye “unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about.” He said the dinner took place “with many members present on the back patio. The dinner was quick and uneventful. Then they left for the airport.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, condemned Trump’s meeting with Fuentes, saying that the idea that Trump “or any serious contender for higher office would meet with him and validate him by sharing a meal and spending time is appalling. And really, you can’t say that you oppose hate and break bread with haters. It’s that simple.”
A former student armed with a semiautomatic pistol and wearing a bulletproof vest fatally shot three people and wounded 13 on Friday after barging into two schools in southeastern Brazil, authorities said.
The shootings took place at a public school with elementary and middle school students and a private school, both located on the same street in the small town of Aracruz in Espirito Santo state, the state’s public security secretariat said in a statement. Two teachers and a student were killed.
Approximately four hours later, the shooter, identified as a 16-year-old boy who used to study at the public school, was arrested by police, Espirito Santo Gov. Renato Casagrande said. Authorities did not release the suspect’s name.
School shootings are
Brazil school shootings:
uncommon in Brazil, but have happened with somewhat greater frequency in recent years.
A Chinese court on Friday sentenced Chinese Canadian pop star Kris Wu to 13 years in prison on charges including rape.
Beijing’s Chaoyang District Court said Wu was given 11 years and 6 months for a 2020 rape, and 1 year and 10 months for the “crime of assembling a crowd to engage in sexual promiscuity” in a 2018 event in which he and others allegedly assaulted two women they had gotten drunk.
Wu, 32, a former member of the South Korean group EXO, was also slapped with a fine of $83.7 million for evading taxes.
China pop star trial:
Canada truckers: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended his decision to invoke emergency powers to quell a trucker convoy protest in February, arguing during public
testimony that the move was aimed at staving off the threat of violence.
Speaking Friday at a televised public inquiry into the government’s decision, Trudeau cited the “weaponization” of vehicles by protesters, and what he said was the use of children as human shields. He also said weapons were found at one of the sites, and there were people in the convoy promoting ideologically motivated extremism.
The anti-government protests gridlocked Canada’s capital city and blockaded U.S. border crossings.
Afghanistan Taliban: The Taliban treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan may amount to a crime against humanity and should be investigated and prosecuted under international law, a U.N. team of experts said Friday.
The Taliban promptly rejected the allegation.
The statement by the U.N.-appointed experts followed a confirmation
from the Taliban that three women were among 12 people lashed on Wednesday in front of hundreds of spectators at a provincial sports stadium.
And on Nov. 11 in Taloqan in northeastern Takhar province, 10 men and nine women were lashed 39 times each in the presence of elders, scholars and residents at the city’s main mosque after Friday prayers. They were accused of adultery, theft and running away from home.
The U.N. experts said the latest Taliban actions may constitute gender persecution, which is a crime against humanity.
Indonesia earthquake: The death toll from an earthquake that struck Indonesia’s Java island early this week rose to 310 after rescuers found more bodies under landslides, an official said. At least 24 people remain missing.
Bodies were recovered Friday in two areas of mountainous Cianjur district,
where landslides triggered by Monday’s quake shifted tons of mud, rocks and broken trees, said Henri Alfiandi, chief of the National Search and Rescue Agency.
More than 1,400 rescuers have been searching through the rubble since the magnitude 5.6 quake, which injured more than 2,000.
A fire in an apartment building in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region killed 10 people and injured nine, authorities said Friday, amid stringent lockdowns that have left many residents in the area stuck in their homes for more than three months.
The fire broke out Thursday night in the regional capital of Urumqi, where temperatures have dropped below freezing after dark.
The deaths and injuries were caused by inhalation of toxic fumes, according to state media reports. An initial investigation appeared to show the fire was sparked by a power strip in a 15th-floor apartment.