Kanye West Trying To Arrange White House Visit For Colin Kaepernick To Hash Out His Differences With Trump
Kanye West is trying to play peacemaker between Colin Kaepernick and Donald Trump, with the White House as the backdrop.
The rapper announced this week that he is trying to arrange a White House visit for the former San Francisco 49ers player so that he can personally hash out his differences with Donald Trump — and the president might, perhaps, retract past criticism of Kaepernick. As the Daily Beast reported, West told TMZ that he wanted the president to walk back his statement in which he called referred to a hypothetical NFL kneeler as a “son of a b***h.”
“I’ve been calling Colin this morning, reaching him, so I can bring Colin to the White House and we can remove that ‘sons of b****es’ statement and we can be on the same page,” West said.
Kanye West has become one of the biggest celebrity backers of Donald Trump, often wearing the president’s trademark “Make America Great Again” hat — most recently donning the signature red trucker cap at an appearance on Saturday Night Live this week.
The rapper is also a fan of Kaepernick, and was spotted the previous week wearing a MAGA hat with a Kaepernick shirt. Some Twitter users were not amused by the gesture.
I'm really looking forward to never listening to another Kanye album again, Kaepernick sweatshirt with a MAGA hat. my god. pic.twitter.com/sK5wjIASv7
— Jordan Zirm (Cavs in 6) (@JordanZirm) September 27, 2018
West said that he hopes that a personal meeting between Donald Trump and Colin Kaepernick could help them to get past their differences.
“We move forward,” West said. “We give love. We keep going. We keep having the conversation until the conversation turns to love.”
That doesn’t seem likely, given Donald Trump’s long history of attacking Colin Kaepernick. As the first player to take a knee during the national anthem in protest of police brutality against minorities, Kaepernick has become a frequent target for Trump and other conservatives.
As CBS Sports reported, Trump — in 2017 — said that the NFL should have suspended Kaepernick for his anthem protest.
“I watched Colin Kaepernick, and I thought it was terrible, and then it got bigger and bigger and started mushrooming, and frankly the NFL should have suspended him for one game, and he would have never done it again,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “They could have then suspended him for two games, and they could have suspended him if he did it a third time, for the season, and you would never have had a problem. But I will tell you, you cannot disrespect our country, our flag, our anthem — you cannot do that.”
Donald Trump has also been vocal in calling on the NFL to ban all national anthem protests, and the league announced in the offseason that it was instituting a policy requiring all players to stand for the anthem. It later backed off from the rule change.
