Kanye West has said Donald Trump is really impressed with white supremacist Nick Fuentes, following his visit to meet the one-time president at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
The rapper, who has legally changed his name to Ye, made the comments in a two-minute campaign-style teaser video on Twitter.
Ye began by saying the former president was perturbed about being asked to be his running mate in the 2024 presidential elections.
“The thing that Trump was most perturbed about [is] me asking him to be my vice president,” Ye said in the video, titled “Mar-a-Lago debrief”.
“I think that was, like, lower on the list of things that caught him off guard,” the rapper said.
“It was the fact that I walked in with intelligence. So Trump is really impressed with Nick Fuentes.”
The video comes just two days after Ye visited Mr Trump’s Florida residence and made headlines after being pictured with Mr Fuentes.
Mr Fuentes is the founder of the far-right, white nationalist America First Foundation. He has been labelled as a white supremacist by the Department of Justice.
He was banned from social media platforms, including Twitter, for allegedly violating hate speech rules and had gained notreity for making antisemitic comments.
Ye, who has himself attracted severe criticism for making antisemitic comments as well, praised Mr Fuentes in the video and described him as a real “loyalist”.
“Nick Fuentes, unlike so many of the lawyers and some of the people [Trump] was left with on his 2020 campaign, he’s actually a loyalist,” he said.
“When all the lawyers said, ‘forget it, Trump’s done,’ there were loyalists running up in the White House, right? And my question would be, ‘Why, when you had the chance, did you not free the January 6ers?’”
Mr Fuentes had also participated in the 2017 “Unite the Right” in Charlottesville which had turned violent. In the rally, a neo-Nazi drove his car into counter-protesters, killing one woman and injuring dozens more.
Ye at one point said Mr Trump insulted his estranged wife Kim Kardashian. The video bleeped out the insult spoken by Ye, who said Mr Trump told him he can tell Ms Kardashian that “you can tell her I said that”.
“I was thinking, like, that’s the mother of my children,” the rapper then said, adding that Mr Trump did not seem happy about his 2024 announcement.
“When Trump started basically screaming at the table telling me I was gonna lose, I mean, has that ever worked for anyone in history? I’m like, ‘wait, hold on Trump, you’re talking to Ye,’” he said laughing.
The video ended with the last slide reading “YE24” and his 2016 song “Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 1” playing in the background.
The Yeezy shoe brand owner dropped a series of 2024 campaign videos on Thursday night, including news commentary by Fox News host Tucker Carlson praising him.
