At noon today, Donald Trump will meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to discuss developments in North Korea and the possibility of … wait. Scratch that. Kayne West is coming to town! The official White House schedule for today had Trump lunching with Pompeo in closed session. But according to the Pool Report, Trump has dropped Pompeo for the first MAGA hat-wearing rap artist who happened to wander by.
“Kanye West is coming to the White House to have lunch with President Trump and he will also meet with Jared Kushner.
But wait! Pencil Mike back in, because after an update it now it seems like Kayne can’t make it until Thursday. So Trump has to sit with Pompeo after all. Neither of them is probably happy about that.
According to the reports, Trump and those two hip young people (Kushner is 37, West is 41) will grab food on Thursday. The White House has provided an official list of topics for the discussion that will come between courses.
- Preventing gang violence—presumably because Kayne is black, and a rapper, and so absolutely an expert on this topic even though he’s the son of a college professor who spent his early teenage years in China and was never in a gang.
- Prison reform—presumably because … black.
- Preventing gang violence—same.
- Manufacturing resurgence in America—because Trump likes to put this thing that isn’t happening into every press release.
Actually, to West’s credit, he sponsored a foundation dedicated to improving literacy and helping young people get into music. After going through several permutations, that organization survives as Donda's House in Chicago, named for his late mother. So talking to him about at-risk youth and encouraging the arts as a means of providing opportunity could make sense. It just seems unlikely that Donald Trump knows that. Also note that neither music specifically, nor the arts in general, make the grade as a subject of discussion—because they don’t fit Trump’s idea of training a new generation of laborers.
West, best known for a music career that has earned him 21 Grammy Awards and for charging onstage and demanding attention, has an … inconsistent political position that includes stating that he would run for president himself, and announcing his support for Donald Trump—because he says his number one concern is health care.
West: We are both dragon energy. He is my brother.
West said he would have voted for Trump … except he didn’t vote.
In September, West announced that he was meeting with Chicago’s Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel to discuss a school funding project.