Trump says Carlos Slim, a frequent campaign target, is a ‘great guy’

Donald Trump on Tuesday acknowledged that he met with Carlos Slim, saying the Mexican billionaire whom he attacked on the campaign trail is a “great guy.”

The pair met for dinner Saturday at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, the telecom titan’s spokesman said Monday. He said that Slim “was left with a very positive taste in his mouth regarding the relationship with Mexico,” according to Reuters.

The meeting follows repeated Trump attacks on both Slim and America’s southern neighbor during Trump’s presidential campaign. Trump targeted Mexico as a driver of American manufacturing job losses and sluggish economic growth and threatened to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border and scrap a key free trade deal. He made slowing illegal immigration from Mexico a policy cornerstone, starting his campaign by saying Mexico is not “sending (its) best” to the United States.

When The New York Times published stories in which women accused Trump of making unwanted sexual advances, Trump suggested that Slim, the newspaper’s largest shareholder, was involved. He also highlighted Slim’s previous donations to the Clinton Foundation, the charitable foundation of his opponent’s family.

“The largest shareholder in the Times is Carlos Slim. Now Carlos Slim, as you know, comes from Mexico,” he said in October while talking about the paper’s coverage, also calling Times reporters “corporate lobbyists for Carlos Slim and Hillary Clinton.”

Slim was initially critical of Trump’s policies toward Mexico, but after Trump’s election, said his success would be good for Mexico.

Source: CNBC