Kanye talks MAGA hat, mental health, more in meeting with President Trump

WASHINGTON — Rapper Kanye West was at the White House with NFL legend Jim Brown and other musicians to witness President Donald Trump sign the Music Modernization Act, but he stole the show with his commentary.

Sitting across from Trump as the two were surrounded by reporters, West spoke favorably about Trump, pitched a new idea for the presidential aircraft and discussed his mental health, among a number of other varying topics.

Here are some quotes from West during his meeting with Trump.

On wearing the MAGA hat:

"It gives me power, in a way. My dad and mom separated, so I did not have lot of male energy in my home and also, I'm married to a family that does not have a lot of male energy. It's beautiful, though, but there's times where -- there's something about --  I love Hillary -- I love everyone, right? 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 -- like a guy that could play catch with his son.

“There was something about when I put this hat on that makes me feel like Superman! That’s my favorite superhero. You make a Superman cape for me.”

On Air Force One:

“This right here is the iPlane 1. It’s a hydrogen-powered airplane, and this is what our president should be flying in. We’re going to have Apple, an American company, work on this plane.

“But you know what I don’t like -- it’s not what I don’t like. What I need ‘Saturday Night Live’ to improve on, or what I need the liberals to improve on, is if (Trump) don’t look good, we don’t look good. This is our president. He has to be the freshest, the flyest, the flyest planes, the best factories.”

On the 13th Amendment:

“There’s a lot of things affecting our mental health that makes us do crazy things that puts us back into that trap door called the 13th Amendment. I did say abolish with the hat on, because why would you keep something that’s a trap door?

“If you’re building a floor — the Constitution is the base of our industry, of our country, of our company, right? Would you build a trap door that if you mess up, and you accidentally — something happens, you fall and you end up next to the Unabomber? You gotta remove all that trap door out of the relationship. The four gentleman that wrote the 13th Amendment — and I think the way the universe works, it’s perfect! We don’t have 13 floors.”

On his mental health:

“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.”

On a future presidential run:

“Only after 2024 ... Let's stop worrying about the future. All we really have is today. We just have today. Over and over again. The hero’s return. Trump is on his hero's journey right now. He might not have thought he'd have a crazy (expletive) like me.”

Trump didn’t speak much during West’s soliloquy, but after, he said West was “a special guy and a “smart cookie” who is welcome to speak at one of his rallies.

“I’ll tell you what, that was pretty impressive,” Trump said.

The full meeting, which includes explicit language, can be seen on C-SPAN's YouTube page.

Cox Media Group