President Trump said Thursday that Kanye West has been a friend of his for a long time and has helped increase his popularity among the African-American community.
“I like [Kanye] a lot. He’s been a friend of mine, I’ve known him a long time,” Trump told “Fox and Friends” Thursday morning. “When Kanye came out a couple months ago, something happened, my polls went up like 25 percent.”
West has been a vocal supporter of Trump, and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, met with the president during the summer regarding prison reform and helped to commute Alice Marie Johnson’s sentence.
West appeared on “Saturday Night Live” at the end of September, where he wore a red “Make America Great Again” hat and spoke about his support for Trump at the end of the show.
He claimed he was bullied backstage for being a Trump supporter and wearing the hat.
“[Kanye West] has a big following in the African-American community,” Trump said. “A big, big following. And I think he has [that following] in a lot of communities, but the polls went through the roof.”
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Trump lauded West for helping bump his poll numbers among the black community, but several black commentators spoke out against West and his support of Trump.
In August, a Rasmussen poll determined that Trump’s support in the African American community had surged to 36 percent, a near doubling from the previous year. But other polls showed support down in the 10 to 15 percent range.
Ahead of West’s scheduled meeting with the president this week, a CNN panel said that it was a joke that West was representing the black community.
“Kanye West is what happens when negroes don’t read,” CNN commentator Bakari Sellers said.
“Listen, black folks are about to trade Kanye West in the racial draft,” panel member Tara Setmayer said, adding, “[Kanye’s] an attention whore, like the president.”
West is set to meet with Trump and his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner this week to speak about “manufacturing resurgence in America, prison reform, how to prevent gang violence, and what can be done to reduce violence in Chicago,” according to White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.
