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Fresh off his announcement that he will run again for president in the 2024 election, Donald Trump has admitted that he dined at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida with disgraced rapper Kanye West and a white nationalist Tuesday.

This past week, Kanye West called me to have dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social on Friday. Shortly thereafter, he unexpectedly showed up with three of his friends, whom I knew nothing about. We had dinner on Tuesday evening with many members present on the back patio. The dinner was quick and uneventful. They then left for the airport.

The admission only came after reports in Axios and Politico that the musician, who legally changed his name to Ye, had brought with him Nick Fuentes, a far-right bigot who attended the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and who wants Republicans to move further to the right and maintain the US as a country predominantly for white Christians.

Trump insisted in another Truth Social post that he did not know who Fuentes was, but defended his decision to dine with Ye, whose business empire has collapsed in a matter of weeks due, in part, to his comments against Jewish people and embrace of White Lives Matter imagery.

We got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on Tucker Carlson, Trump wrote. Why wouldnt I agree to meet?

News of Trumps decision to dine with the pair alarmed even his advisers, some of whom spoke anonymously with media outlets to criticize him. “This is a fucking nightmare,” one Trump adviser told NBC News. “If people are looking at [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis to run against Trump, here’s another reason why.”

Even a social visit from an antisemite like Kanye West and human scum like Nick Fuentes is unacceptable, tweeted David Friedman, who served as US ambassador to Israel under Trump. I urge you to throw those bums out, disavow them and relegate them to the dustbin of history where they belong.

In a video on Twitter, Ye described details of the dinner and said Trump was really impressed with Nick Fuentes.

Nick Fuentes, unlike so many of the lawyers and so many people that he was left with on his 2020 campaign, hes actually a loyalist, said Ye.

Ye, who is mounting a ludicrous run for president himself, said Trump became angry at the dinner only when the rapper asked him to be his running mate.

When Trump started basically screaming at me at the table, telling me I was going to lose. I mean, has that ever worked for anyone in history? Ye said. Im like, Whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on, Trump, youre talking to Ye.

In addition to Ye’s bigotry, the rapper is being investigated by Adidas over claims that he showed workers explicit pictures and videos, including an intimate photo of his ex-wife, Kim Kardashian.

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Environment

Podcast: New Tesla Model Y unveil, Mazda 6e, Aptera solar car production-intent, more

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Podcast: New Tesla Model Y unveil, Mazda 6e, Aptera solar car production-intent, more

In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss the official unveiling of the new Tesla Model Y, Mazda 6e, Aptera solar car production-intent, and more.

The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.

As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.

After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:

We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.

Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:

Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET):

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Environment

BYD’s new Han L EV just leaked in China and it’s a monster

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BYD's new Han L EV just leaked in China and it's a monster

The Chinese EV leader is launching a new flagship electric sedan. BYD’s new Han L EV leaked in China on Friday, revealing a potential Tesla Model S Plaid challenger.

What we know about the BYD Han L EV so far

We knew it was coming soon after BYD teased the Han L on social media a few days ago. Now, we are learning more about what to expect.

BYD’s new electric sedan appeared in China’s latest Ministry of Industry and Information Tech (MIIT) filing, a catalog of new vehicles that will soon be sold.

The filing revealed four versions, including two EV and two PHEV models. The Han L EV will be available in single- and dual-motor configurations. With a peak power of 580 kW (777 hp), the single-motor model packs more power than expected.

BYD’s dual-motor Han L gains an additional 230 kW (308 hp) front-mounted motor. As CnEVPost pointed out, the vehicle’s back has a “2.7S” badge, which suggests a 0 to 100 km/h (0 to 62 mph) sprint time of just 2.7 seconds.

BYD-Han-L-EV
BYD Han L EV (Source: China MIIT)

To put that into perspective, the Tesla Model S Plaid can accelerate from 0 to 100 km in 2.1 seconds. In China, the Model S Plaid starts at RBM 814,900, or over $110,000. Speaking of Tesla, the EV leader just unveiled its highly anticipated Model Y “Juniper” refresh in China on Thursday. It starts at RMB 263,500 ($36,000).

BYD already sells the Han EV in China, starting at around RMB 200,000. However, the single front motor, with a peak power of 180 kW, is much less potent than the “L” model. The Han EV can accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in 7.9 seconds.

BYD-Han-L-EV
BYD Han L EV (Source: China MIIT)

At 5,050 mm long, 1,960 mm wide, and 1,505 mm tall with a wheelbase of 2,970 mm, BYD’s new Han L is roughly the size of the Model Y (4,970 mm long, 1,964 mm wide, 1,445 mm tall, wheelbase of 2,960 mm).

Other than that it will use a lithium iron phosphate (LFP) pack from BYD’s FinDreams unit, no other battery specs were revealed. Check back soon for the full rundown.

Source: CnEVPost, China MIIT

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Technology

Zuckerberg says Biden administration pushed Meta ‘super hard’ to take down vaccine content

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Zuckerberg says Biden administration pushed Meta 'super hard' to take down vaccine content

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears at the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024. Meta debuted its first pair of augmented reality glasses, devices that show a combined view of the digital and physical worlds, a key step in Zuckerberg’s goal of one day offering a hands-free alternative to the smartphone.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan in a podcast published on Friday that his company was pressured by the Biden administration to remove content on side effects of Covid vaccines.

Early in a conversation that lasted about three hours, Zuckerberg told Rogan that he’s generally “pretty pro rolling out vaccines” and that they are “more positive than negative.”

“But I think that while they’re trying to push that program, they also tried to censor anyone who is basically arguing against it,” Zuckerberg said.

A Biden administration representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The remarks come days after Meta said it would stop relying on third parties to check facts published on its widely used applications and instead turn to community notes, letting users add commentary regarding truthfulness. The strategy puts Meta more inline with X, whose owner, Elon Musk, has been advising President-elect Donald Trump and was a major backer of his campaign.

It’s also the latest in a string of announcements and comments following Trump’s election that appear targeted at appeasing the incoming president. Last week, Meta replaced its president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, with Joel Kaplan, the company’s current policy vice president and a former Republican Party staffer.

Meta was one of several large technology companies to announce that it was contributing $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, NBC News reported.

Zuckerberg has expressed criticism in the past about the Biden administration’s handling of Covid-related content.

In a letter to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee in August, Zuckerberg said the administration “pressured” Meta to “censor” Covid-19 content, adding that he regretted some of the decisions the company made following those requests.

“And they pushed us super hard, to take down the things that were honestly were true,” Zuckerberg told Rogan. “They basically pushed us and said, you know, anything that says that vaccines might have side effects, you basically need to take down.”

Zuckerberg didn’t specify who from the White House made the requests, acknowledging that “I wasn’t involved in those conversations directly.” But he said the company’s response was that it wasn’t going to take down content that “is kind of inarguably true.”

The Food and Drug Administration said in 2021 that headache, fatigue, muscle aches, nausea and fever were the most common side effects of Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot Covid vaccine. Worldwide, Covid vaccines are credited with saving tens of millions of lives a year when the pandemic was raging.

On a separate matter, Zuckerberg said that the U.S. government hasn’t done enough to protect its technology industry, leaving too much power in the hands of regulators abroad. He said the European Union has fined technology companies more than $30 billion over the past 20 years.

“It’s one of the things that I’m optimistic about with President Trump, is I think he just wants America to win,” Zuckerberg said.

WATCH: Reed: Is Facebook a news platform or a vehicle for information?

Reed: Is Facebook a news platform or a vehicle for information?

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