Ice Cube responds after Trump administration thanks him for helping w/ “Platinum Plan”

UPDATE: Ice Cube responds further: “I haven’t endorsed anybody.”

Earlier today, Trump administration senior advisor Katrina Pierson thanked rapper Ice Cube on Twitter for his help with something called the “Platinum Plan“, $500 billion package which claims it will create 3 million new jobs for Black Americans, make Juneteenth a national holiday and more.:

Shoutout to @icecube for his willingness to step up and work with @realDonaldTrump Administration to help develop the #PlatinumPlan

ICYMI: https://t.co/V0qOAp0lwR

Leaders gonna lead, haters gonna hate. Thank you for leading! ✊🏾

— Katrina Pierson (@KatrinaPierson) October 13, 2020

Unsurprisingly, Twitter blew up over this. Questlove wrote “wait….this CANT be true. I refuse. I refuse. I refuse!!!!!,” which he followed up with “also….imma use the next 3 hours to be in denial. I really don’t believe this” and then “I knew some ish was gonna happen in retrograde but not this” before deleting those three tweets and writing “until I hear direct from horses mowf….im chillin’ —it just hit me that I can’t take anything from [Trump’s] camp at face value. they will slant anything. And what is a PlatinumPlan?”

until I hear direct from horses mowf….im chillin' —it just hit me that I can't take anything from 🍊's camp at face value. they will slant anything. And what is a PlatinumPlan?

— AKT (@questlove) October 14, 2020

Ice Cube has since responded, and clarified just a bit about his involvement in the Platinum Plan, saying that both the Biden and Trump campaigns contacted him about Contract With Black America, a document he drafted that “strikes at the heart of racism and presents a blueprint to achieve racial economic justice.” “Facts: I put out the CWBA,” Ice Cube wrote. “Both parties contacted me. Dems said we’ll address the CWBA after the election. Trump campaign made some adjustments to their plan after talking to us about the CWBA.”

Facts: I put out the CWBA. Both parties contacted me. Dems said we’ll address the CWBA after the election. Trump campaign made some adjustments to their plan after talking to us about the CWBA.

— Ice Cube (@icecube) October 14, 2020

Back in August, Ice Cube posted a video titled “What’s In It For Us” demanding that politicians sign the Contract With Black America before asking for the Black Vote. This week he posted a new video titled “Don’t Kill the Messenger,” where he said he’d been in contact with both presidential campaigns about CWBA. “No president has done right by us,” he said in the video. “So, I don’t trust none of them. Putting our hopes and dreams behind any of them just don’t work. … I’ve been making contacts with them, trying to talk about these real issues. Straight up, I believe the Democrats have been nice…I don’t really see them pushing their policies in any different direction.” He also noted that “the Democrats, they have every Black celebrity and shit on they team, so they just figure, ‘Tell Cube to shut the fuck up and vote.’ I ain’t gonna do that. I’m gonna push the program.” You can watch both those videos below.

While he hasn’t been specific on what adjustments the Trump campaign made to their Platinum Plan after speaking to him, Ice Cube has now responded to some of the people accusing him of, as one Twitter user put it, “working with the Darkside.” “Every side is the Darkside for us here in America,” Ice Cube wrote. “They’re all the same until something changes for us. They all lie and they all cheat but we can’t afford not to negotiate with whoever is in power or our condition in this country will never change. Our justice is bipartisan.”

Previously, Ice Cube has blasted Trump, tweeting “I will never endorse a mothafucka like Donald Trump! EVER!!!” in 2016, and releasing “Arrest the President” in 2018. There’s also, of course, his 1991 diss track “No Vaseline,” the line “I never have dinner with the president” included.

UPDATE: Ice Cube responds further: “I haven’t endorsed anybody.”

https://twitter.com/DonCheadle/status/1316479461982953476