Kanye West Once Visited The Trumps At Mar-A-Lago (& It Didn't Go Well)
Thanksgiving is a joyous time for many, with family and friends coming together to celebrate all they're grateful for. However, it can be horrendous for others, filled with fights, discontent, and disdain as egos compete and clash, making for an experience void of any Thanksgiving spirit. Such was the case when Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, took his show on the road to Mar-a-Lago to dine with Donald Trump.
Ye and Trump's relationship has been a rollercoaster. It started badly, with Trump telling TMZ he was "disgusted" by the rapper "grandstanding to get attention" during the 2009 Taylor Swift MTV VMAs debacle and vowing to boycott all things Ye. However, everything changed in 2015 after Ye announced his intention to run for president in 2020.
Trump told Rolling Stone he'd love to go against Ye. "He's said very nice things about me in the past ... extremely positive things," Trump said, adding he believed he'd been the inspiration for Ye's presidential aspirations. "He's actually a different kind of person than people think. He's a nice guy," Trump continued. Ye returned the fangirling during the San Jose leg of his Saint Pablo tour with a passionate 25-minute pro-Trump rant. "If I would've voted, I would've voted for Trump," he told the audience. A torrent of mutually gushing posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, followed, and even a meeting of the minds when Ye visited Trump at the White House. With that much love flowing, what could possibly go wrong at Mar-a-Lago?
Thanksgiving train wreck
In November 2022, Donald Trump and Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, met for a pre-turkey day dinner at the golden and garish Mar-a-Lago. Trump and the rapper's friendship had blossomed after Ye announced his 2020 presidential run. The two flaunted their bromance on X, formerly known as Twitter, and in gushing interviews. So, why wasn't it a joyous Mar-a-Lago feast? Well, bringing along three far-right white nationalists as your plus-one is likely to curdle the gravy.
Per NBC News, the plan was for Trump and Ye to enjoy a private dinner. However, Ye set the cat among the turkeys when he rolled up with Nick Fuentes and two others. Trump basked in the adoration as he made his grand entrance, but the smile quickly disappeared. "We saw everybody in the dining room get up and start applauding, and then the president entered," Fuentes shared. He said Trump asked Ye to dine solo, but he'd insisted his neo-Nazi pals tag along.
According to the Daily Mail, Ye shared how it all went down in a video posted on X, which has since been scrubbed. He claimed Trump blew his lid when he asked him to run as his vice president in his 2024 presidential campaign. Still, Ye admitted the egocentric and outlandish request was probably "lower on the list of things that caught him off guard." He said, "It was the fact that I walked in with intelligence." And that was just the beginning of the festivities.
Out-trolling the king of all trolls
When Ye, formally known as Kanye West, said Trump freaked out because he'd "walked in with intelligence," he was referring to his good pal, Nick Fuentes. The far-right white supremacist is a Holocaust denier who once compared murdered Jews to "baked cookies." He also said he'd join Antifa if it was a fascist group that supported Mussolini. And he claimed Jim Crow segregation was no biggie. "It was better for [African Americans] too — They had to drink out of a different water fountain, big f***ing deal."
So, you can see why it would raise eyebrows for Trump to be seen publicly dining with Fuentes, in addition to Ye, who was facing an antisemitic firestorm at the time (via American Jewish Committee). However, according to Ye, everything was peachy. "Trump is really impressed with Nick Fuentes," he claimed in his "debrief" video (via the Daily Mail), adding that Fuentes praised 45 as "his hero."
NBC News reports that a slew of Republicans, including ex-Vice President Mike Pence, slammed Trump for hanging out with Fuentes and called on him to apologize — something he's not bigly on. Instead, Trump admitted in several Truth Social posts that Fuentes had dined with him but stopped at condemning his views. Meanwhile, Trump ranted to staff that Ye had double-crossed him. "He tried to f*** me. He's crazy. He can't beat me," he reportedly told a White House insider. "The master troll got trolled," the source told NBC. "Kanye punked Trump."