• Biden, Trump campaign in A critical battlegrounds,
or as long as Donald Trump has been a brand name —– representing playboy bling and New York business savvy in the 1990s up through his freestyle approach to presidential politics today — he has flirted with hip-hop. Sometimes, famous rappers reciprocate.
Yet even for a man who once palled around Manhattan nightclubs with Puff Daddy and Russell Simmons, and later hosted Kanye West in the Oval Office, Trump can still surprise with his Black celebrity alliances, judging by the reaction Thursday night to a photo op with Lil Wayne.
“Just had a great meeting with @realdonaldtrump,” the multiplatinum rapper posted to his nearly 35 million followers on Twitter after the two posed together in Florida, earning a retweet from the president. “He listened to what we had to say today and assured he will and can get it done.”
The photo immediately went viral on social media, but the backlash was swift as well, making Lil Wayne the latest in a recent line of rappers to align themselves, however briefly, with the president’s reelection campaign, only to face criticism from fans and fellow artists. Lil Wayne, like Ice Cube before him, had cited the president’s Platinum Plan, a two-page document rolled out in September that promised to “increase access to capital in Black communities by almost $500 billion” over the next four years.
Radio host Charlamagne Tha God, of The Breakfast Club on Power 105.1 FM in New York, responded in a segment Friday morning, calling Lil Wayne’s apparent endorsement a distraction. While he noted that Black voters are not monolithic, Charlamagne added, “Trust me when I tell you, Black people are not on the Trump administration’s agenda, nor will we ever be. All of our civil liberties are at risk.”
Earlier in October, New York rapper 50 Cent also seemed to endorse Trump in a post on Instagram, claiming that Joe Biden would raise taxes. “I don’t care Trump doesn’t like black people,” 50 Cent wrote. “62% are you out of ya [expletive] mind.”
Ice Cube, a founding member of N.W.A, who released a song called “Arrest the President” as recently as 2018, faced similar scrutiny after it was announced in October that he had consulted with the Trump administration on the Platinum Plan. He said later that he hoped to work with both sides and was not endorsing Trump, adding, “I don’t trust none of them.”
“Black progress is a bipartisan issue,” Ice Cube said. “I will advise anybody on the planet who has the power to help Black Americans close the enormous wealth gap.”
Trump has called himself the best president for Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln. His campaign has said that it hoped to slightly improve on its performance with Black voters in 2016, when Trump earned about 8% of the Black vote. Of course, plenty of rappers have endorsed Biden, including Cardi B, Offset and Snoop Dogg, while others, like Waka Flocka Flame and Lil Pump, who is of Mexican and Cuban descent, have signaled an openness to supporting the president.