As promised, Kanye West met with President Donald Trump at the White House today. West delivered an extended speech in front of the president and reporters, while seated next to NFL legend Jim Brown. He, Brown, and Trump then took questions from reporters. Watch them talk in the Oval Office below (via HuffPost Politics).
At one point, West discussed why he wears a MAGA hat:
This hat, it gives me power in a way. My dad and my mom separated, so I didn’t have a lot of male energy in my home. And, also, I’m married to a family that, you know, not a lot of male energy going on. It’s beautiful, though! I love Hillary. I love everyone. But the campaign “I’m With Her” just didn’t make me feel—as a guy that didn’t get to see my dad all the time, a guy that could play catch with his son—it was something about when I put this hat on it made me feel like Superman. You made a Superman.
Later, he discussed the 13th Amendment, which segued into West talking about bipolar disorder:
I did say “abolish” with the hat because, why would you keep something around that’s a trapdoor? If you’re building a floor, the Constitution is the base of our industry—of our country, of our company—would you build a trapdoor that if you mess up and you accidentally something happens and you fall and end up next to the Unabomber, you gotta remove all that trapdoor out of the relationship.
The four gentlemen that wrote the 13th Amendment—and I think the way the universe works, it’s perfect. We don’t have 13th floors, do we? The four gentlemen that wrote the 13th Amendment didn’t look like the people they were amending. Also, at that point, it was illegal for blacks to read. Or African-Americans to read. And so that meant that if you actually read the amendment, you’d get locked up and turned to a slave! Again. So, what I think is we don’t need sentences, we need pardons.
I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I was connected with a neuropsychologist that works with the athletes in the NBA and the NFL. He looked at my brain. It’s equal on three parts. I’m gonna go ahead and drop some bombs for you: 98th percentile IQ test. I had a 75 percentile of all human beings when it was counting numbers backwards, so I’m gonna work on that one. The other ones, 98 percent. Tesla. Freud. So, he said that I actually wasn’t bipolar. I had sleep deprivation, which can cause dementia 10 to 20 years from now, where I wouldn’t even remember my son’s name. So all this power that I got—and I’m taking my son to the Sox game and all that—I wouldn’t be able to remember his name from a misdiagnosage.
It was previously reported that West would meet with the president and son-in-law Jared Kushner, where they would discuss manufacturing in Chicago, violence in Chicago, and job opportunities for former convicts. In addition, despite reports indicating he’d be present, West was not in attendance when Trump signed the Music Modernization Act into law. Many other artists—including Kid Rock, Mike Love, and Jeff Baxter—did attend the press conference.
West has been vocal about his support of Trump since after he was elected in 2016. They previously met at Trump Tower in December 2016 following the infamous end of the Saint Pablo Tour. Kanye recently wore a MAGA hat on “SNL” and gave a political speech after the show went off the air.
Read Pitchfork’s feature “The Plight of the Kanye Superfan.”
This article was originally published on Thursday, October 11 at 1:18 p.m. Eastern. It was last updated on Thursday, October 11 at 1:56 p.m. Easte