Kanye West and Donald Trump's 'friendship' appears to be over after an explosive dinner - with accusations of screaming, insults and an unwanted surprise guest.
The disgraced rapper, who is currently being slammed for his latest sickening anti-Semitic tirade where he claimed he 'sees good things about Hitler', and former US President had been pals before the latter entered the White House.
West gave a shout out to Trump in his song So Appalled, with the lyrics: "Balding Donald Trump taking dollars from y'all" and even seemed to sacrifice his friendship with John Legend to support the Republican candidate in 2016.
The Heartless songmaker claimed Trump was his "brother" and insisted the backlash to their friendship would not stop him loving the President - and he visited the White House in October 2018.
But it's a visit to Trump's current home, the Mar-a-Lago club home in Florida, for a pre-Thanksgiving meal which has caused an incredibly heated row.
The pair were supposed to be having a relaxed dinner two days before the American holiday last week after a month of private phone calls.
West then claimed he turned up wearing jeans and even kept Trump waiting, but that wasn't what caused all the drama.
The rapper brought three "unannounced guests", including white nationalist and antisemite Nick Fuentes, who was banned from YouTube for violating its hate speech policy.
"We saw everybody in the dining room get up and start applauding, and then the president entered," Fuentes told NBC News.
"He greeted us, and he invited Ye into dinner and Ye said that he wanted to bring us with him to the table. So we walked in and Ye took some pictures with some of the guests in the dining room and then we sat down at the table."
According to Fuentes, Trump made sure they sat at his specially reserved table on the patio for all to see as a happy photo opportunity.
In a video posted to his 32 million followers on his recently reinstated Twitter account titled 'Mar-a-Lago Debrief', West claimed Trump was "impressed" by Fuentes.
He said: "Trump is really impressed with Nick Fuentes and Nick Fuentes, unlike so many of the lawyers and so many people that he was left with on his 2020 campaign, he's actually a loyalist."
It didn't all go smoothly on the night, as the conversation moved onto politics and a request that left Trump feeling "most perturbed".
West, who announced he would run for President in 2024, told Trump that he should be his running mate, rather than carry on with his own campaign.
This offer did not go down well with the former US President, who reportedly flew off the handle.
In the 'Mar-a-Lago Debrief' video, West claimed: "Trump started basically screaming at me at the table, telling me I was going to lose. I mean, has that ever worked for anyone in history? That I'm going to lose? I was like hold on hold on Trump. You're talking to Ye."
He added: "I think the thing Trump was most perturbed about [was] me asking him to be my vice president. I think that was lower on the list of things that caught him off guard."
It's then alleged that Trump insulted West's ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, while going on a rant about the Alex Johnson, the great-grandmother serving a life sentence who he granted clemency to in 2018.
"He goes into the story about all that he went through to get Alex Johnson out of jail but he didn’t do it for Kim but he did for me,”" West said.
"But then he goes on to say that Kim is a [expletive] and you can tell her I said that. And I was thinking like that’s the mother of my children."
Trump quickly realised what a massive mistake the dinner was - and it might have serious consequences for his presidential campaign.
He has since claimed he knew "nothing about" Fuentes before he "unexpectedly showed up" at his home, which the white nationalist has backed.
Speaking on his Truth Social platform to question "Why wouldn't I agree to meet?", the former President wrote: "Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, was asking me for advice concerning some of his difficulties, in particular having to do with his business. We also discussed, to a lesser extent, politics, where I told him he should definitely not run for President, "any voters you may have should vote for TRUMP."
"Anyway, we got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on Tucker Carlson. Why wouldn't I agree to meet? Also, I didn't know Nick Fuentes."
Trump later blasted West, who has seen his net worth drop by $2billion after he was dropped by his talent agency, fashion brand Balenciaga, bank JP Morgan and Adidas over his sickening anti-semitic rants.
The former President explained: "So I help a seriously troubled man, who just happens to be black, Ye (Kanye West), who has been decimated in his business and virtually everything else, and who has always been good to me, by allowing his request for a meeting at Mar-a-Lago, alone, so that I can give him very much needed "advice."
"He shows up with [three] people, two of which I didn’t know, the other a political person who I haven’t seen in years. I told him don’t run for office, a total waste of time, can’t win. Fake News went CRAZY!"
It's been claimed Trump 'fell into a trap', with one long time adviser saying it was clear that Fuentes' presence was part of a headline-grabbing setup.
"The master troll got trolled," the adviser, who didn't want to go on record, said. "Kanye punked Trump."
Milo Yiannopoulos, the anti-Trump far-right provocateur who is now acting as a political adviser to West, told NBC News that he was "the architect" of the plan.
Yiannopoulos said he arranged the dinner "just to make Trump's life miserable" because news would leak and the former Apprentice star would mishandle it.
"I wanted to show Trump the kind of talent that he's missing out on by allowing his terrible handlers to dictate who he can and can’t hang out with," Yiannopoulos said.
"I also wanted to send a message to Trump that he has systematically repeatedly neglected, ignored, abused the people who love him the most, the people who put him in office, and that kind of behaviour comes back to bite you in the end."
Trump's campaign is now instituting new vetting procedures and gatekeeping efforts so that such a scandal doesn't happen again - but the damage may already be done.
He was already struggling to get support from many Republicans - and now some are calling on him to apologise, including his former Vice President Mike Pence.
In an interview with NewsNation on Monday night, Mr Pence said: "President Trump was wrong to give a white nationalist, an antisemite and Holocaust denier, a seat at the table, and I think he should apologise for it.
"And he should denounce those individuals and their hateful rhetoric, without qualification."
Republican Representative from Nebraska's 2nd district, Don Bacon, said the dinner was "appalling", while GOP Governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, also slammed Trump.
He told CNN: "I don't think it’s a good idea for a leader that's setting an example for the country or the party to meet with (an) avowed racist or anti-Semite. And so it’s very troubling and it shouldn’t happen and we need to avoid those kinds of empowering the extremes.
"You want to diminish their strength, not empower them. Stay away from it."
Trump will no doubt be looking to distance himself even further away from West after he disgustingly claimed he 'likes' Hitler.
West admitted he "sees good things" about the evil Nazi leader in his latest anti-Semitic outburst during an interview on Thursday with right-wing radio host Alex Jones on his InfoWars show.
Wearing a bizarre outfit with a black hood used to cover his entire face, West said: "Well I see good things about Hitler also.
"I love everyone and Jewish people are not going to tell me, 'You can love us and you can love what we're doing to you in the contracts and you can love what we're pushing with the pornography,' but this guy that invented highways, invented the very microphone that I use as a musician, 'You can't say out loud that this person ever did anything good'.
"And I'm done with that! I'm done with the classifications. Every human being has something of value that they brought to the table, especially Hitler."
The microphone was in fact invented in 1877 by Emile Berliner, with highways being used as far back as the Roman Empire.
As the show went to an advert break, Kanye added: "I like Hitler."
He also said: "They did good things too, we’ve got to stop dissing the Nazis all the time."
West's Twitter account has been officially suspended after violating the platform's policy against inciting violence.
Newly-instated Twitter boss Elon Musk, who has previously been a backer of the rapper, confirmed the news on Thursday.
Action was taken after the US rapper posted a series of erratic tweets, one of which appeared to show a symbol combining a swastika and a Jewish star.
In another tweet, Kanye showed a picture of a man he claimed he had 'caught wife Kim Kardashian with.'
Replying to one Twitter user, who urged him to "fix Kanye", Musk replied: "I tried my best.
"Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended."
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