President-elect Trump lifted his eyes from the phone long enough to notice the man standing in his doorway. “Kanye, Kanye, come on in!” he exclaimed. “I’ve just been fighting all these—the media, they’re so biased. Rex Tillerson, widely respected, and they’re spreading lies about him. It’s unfair.”
Kanye West sauntered toward a chair before Trump’s desk, shrugged his shoulders, and sat.
“Screams from the haters—got a nice ring to it,” he grinned.
“I know. I know I’m winning when they say these things,” Trump responded. “But who else was there? I couldn’t pick Mitt. Rudy was out.”
“Colin. Powell.”
Trump shook his head.
“Austin. Powers.”
Trump reflexively smirked and looked down at his desk, and then his face was dour again.
“I can’t catch a break, Kanye. We’re assembling the best cabinet in history, ever—Newt said so this morning—and I get no credit. It’s all just, CNN this, New York Times—still failing—that, and …”
A clip of Saturday Night Live on a TV tuned to MSNBC interrupted his train of thought.
“And Alec, Alec Baldwin. No talent, not funny, doing this awful impression of me. It’s so bad. Have you seen this, Kanye?”
“F— SNL and the whole cast,” West responded.
“Yes,” Trump replied emphatically. “Exactly.”
“Tell them Yeezy said they can kiss my whole a—.”
“I should! See, Kanye, you get it. You get it. You understand how these people are against you, against me. This is exactly why I wanted you here. You know how this is.”
The president-elect looked at the time and realized he was pressed for it. There was so much he wanted to discuss: Kanye’s embrace of him during a concert tour, what the rest of the music industry thought of him, the constitutional separation of powers. The thought entered Trump’s mind that he would have to tell the press something of substance about this meeting, that they talked about more than just, who knows, “life,” or whatever he would come up with to say to those editorial squirrels.
“Kanye, I want to ask you something,” Trump began. “I know I have the Republicans in Congress—Mitch, good guy, never gave me any grief, Paul has really come around—but we have to start, day one, no delay. We have so many wonderful things we … have to …”
West had leaned to his side and was trying to conceal his laughter with his right hand. Trump asked him what the deal was.
“This is way too much. I need a moment,” Kanye said through chuckles.
“Kanye, we don’t have all day here! The clock’s ticking—”
“—you just count the hours?” West said, finishing Trump’s sentence, now chortling.
“Minutes, Kanye, minutes! We have just minutes.”
West raised his outward-facing palm to chest-level, nodded acknowledgement, and composed himself. Trump started again.
“We have to start doing these wonderful things right away, Kanye, and I don’t know how long we can wait. Even if I have Mitch and Paul. I just don’t know. What do you think about me—the White House—doing big executive action on the first day? Immigration, Obamacare, trade—big-league things. The people want it. We know they do. What would you think if I did that?”
West stroked his chin and spoke.
“No one man should have all that power.”
Trump backed up from his desk and stood.
“All right, we’re just going to say we talked about ‘life.'”
