The new book "This Will Not Pass," by New York Times reporters Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin, suggests that President Donald Trump's senior adviser Jared Kushner was using rapper Kanye West for political gain.
"The president’s son-in-law possessed limited campaign experience but Tom Brady–like confidence in his political intuition," the book explained. "He had spent some time early in the summer helping goad the rapper Kanye West into an improbable independent run for the presidency. Kushner had personally worked to recruit a campaign manager for West, in a far-fetched scheme he appeared to believe would help siphon Black voters away from Biden. (West ultimately won about seventy-one thousand votes nationwide.)"
Forbes reported three months before the 2020 election that Kushner was having "near-daily" conversations with West. The New York Times similarly said earlier that same day that Kushner and wife, Ivanka, met with West in Telluride, Colorado the weekend before. It was then that West began telling associates that he and Kushner speak “almost daily.”
Forbes reported at the time that they spoke with four people directly linked to Kushner or West who confirmed the men's conversations.
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Earlier this year, Kushner met with West for the first time alone, publicly, since their mutual election failures. Kushner claimed it was just a friendly meeting.
Prior to that, West and Kushner saw each other at a New York City fashion show with their then-wives Kardashian and Ivanka Trump last Dec. While Kushner told the press that he's been "friends" with West for a decade there aren't many public sightings to support it, despite Kardashian's public life.
At one point in 2014, now ex-wife Kim Kardashian looked at a New York City apartment that was owned by Jared and Ivanka. It was just after she and West had their first child.
West met with Trump in Oct. 2018 at the White House, where the rapper did a 10-minute monologue about being misdiagnosed as bipolar. West now openly says that he is bipolar, however. Throughout 2018, Kardashian lobbied the White House on criminal justice report, specifically citing one innocent woman wrongfully convicted. She and West went on to lobby Trump to release A$AP Rocky.
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Prior to that, West showed up at Trump Tower in Dec. 2016 to discuss crime in Chicago ahead of the inauguration. Trump told the press at the time that he too had known West for a long time.
There are no public reports about the two men prior to looking at the Kushner/Trump apartment in 2014 and the ultimate meeting with Trump after he won the election. It's unknown how often the men spent time together outside of the public eye or episodes of the Kardashians' reality show.
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