Trump met with West in the midst of recovery efforts in Florida after the devastation of Hurricane Michael, which now ranks as the fourth most powerful hurricane ever to strike the United States.
Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown, who has previously discussed issues facing the African-American community with Trump, was also in attendance.
The Oval Office meeting was supposed to be about prison reform and other criminal justice issues. Instead, it was a political sideshow featuring two egotistical and erratic men praising each other.
West was the star of this reality show.
“There was something about putting this hat on that made me feel like Superman,” West said, donning his red “Make America Great Again” cap at the White House meeting.
The president is on a “hero’s journey,” said West during his sad, rambling, profanity-laced, incoherent soliloquy.
“Let’s stop worrying about the future, all we have is today,” West said, commenting on his own presidential ambitions. “Trump is on his hero’s journey right now. He might not have thought he’d have a crazy mother-f—r like me [supporting him].”
At one point West held out his phone and showed Trump a picture of a hydrogen-powered plane that he thought should replace Air Force One.
“This right here is the iPlane 1,” said West. “This is what our president should be flying.” Added West: “If he don’t look good, we don’t look good. This is our president. He has to be the freshest, the flyest” and have “the flyest planes.”
West told reporters in the Oval Office that he had been asked to speak with the president about the detriments of applying stop-and-frisk policing policies in Chicago. The president has frequently praised the program, telling a law enforcement group last week that he has urged the city of Chicago to “strongly consider stop-and-frisk.”
The president said during the White House meeting that he’s “totally open” to an alternative to stop-and-frisk.
“I’m totally open. If we can do it a different way, Kanye, I’m totally open, but they all — we all agree that we have to do something,” Trump said.
The White House billed the meeting as one centered on urban revitalization, workforce training, African-American unemployment, potential future clemencies and crime in Chicago.
These are serious issues that deserve discussion by serious people who know what they are talking about. Whether it’s slavery, the 13th Amendment or other social issues, West has demonstrated that he does not study the topics he is talking about. He is an ignorant, ill-informed person who admits to not reading books.
If the Trump administration wanted to have a serious discussion about criminal justice reform, there are serious African American scholars and activists such as Michelle Alexander, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, James Foreman Jr. and Bryan Stevenson, to name a few, who can seriously discuss the issue in-depth and provide thoughtful, nonpartisan, evidence-based recommendations. Instead we got a circus.
https://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/the-circus-trump-kanye/article_fb68426d-72d3-5b6c-a8b1-3fa98d029ac9.html
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