Donald Trump And Kanye West: A Timeline Of The Pair's Perplexing Relationship

Donald Trump and Kanye West seem to have different fan bases, to say the least. When the president-elect praised the Chicago rapper at a campaign rally in September, he was met with applause and laughter. But when West admitted he didn’t vote in the 2016 presidential election, but would have cast a ballot for the New York billionaire if he did, fans at his November concert began booing in disdain.

The two entertainers have had a seemingly cordial relationship ever since Trump announced his campaign for presidency in 2015. Though West never officially endorsed a candidate for the White House, his wife Kim Kardashian-West was a supporter of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (though she did consider flipping her support for Trump after speaking with Caitlyn Jenner at one point). Trump’s unannounced meeting with West Tuesday morning at the Trump Towers in New York City immediately became national news, as photos and video of the two men dabbing inside the luxury lobby went viral on Twitter.

When asked what the pair discussed in their meeting, Trump replied, "just friends, just friends and, uh, he’s a good man… we’ve been friends for a long time. Life. We discussed life." West would not respond, telling reporters, "I just want to take a picture right now."

Trump and West are different in many ways, from their upbringings to their professional careers. While West grew up in Chicago’s south side and moved to New York to launch his career in 2001, Trump had already accrued a massive empire in the Big Apple after his father gave him a multimillion dollar loan decades before. But the two are also inextricably linked through Hollywood’s limelight and the pressures of fame and wealth. Both men have faced public media scandals; each have garnered massive online followings, often through controversial tweetstorms. Trump and West regularly condemn the mainstream media, declaring they’re fundamentally misunderstood by the press.

But the two only seemed to begin directly referencing each other during the latest election season, one of the most polarizing in modern American history.

"Kanye West, you know what, I'll never say bad about him, you know why? Because he loves Trump!" Trump said at a September campaign rally, noting the rapper's apparent announcement that he'd run for president at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards. "He loves Trump, he goes around saying, ‘Trump is my all-time hero!’ He says it to everybody. So Kanye West, I love him. Maybe in a few years I’ll have to run against him, I don’t know, so I’ll take that back, but you know what, he’s been so nice to me."

Meanwhile, West only recently discussed Trump after the president-elect's shocking Election Day victory, picking up 306 votes in the Electoral College to Clinton's 232.

"If I were to vote, I would have voted on Trump," West told a stadium of fans in San Jose, California in November. "Everybody told me not to say that I loved the debates. I loved his approach… I think that Hillary Clinton should still be a consultant. I still think that Bill Clinton should be a consultant. Like Obama said, I think that Obama should still be a consultant, it’s not, ‘Oh, I don’t fuck with your president so I’m not going to give you information that will help you help all of us.'" The comments were made during one of West’s last shows before the rapper cancelled the remainder of his Life of Pablo tour after being hospitalized for exhaustion.

It's unclear what comments Trump was referring to when he said West said he "loves Trump" – though there were reports which seemed to confirm West’s support for the GOP candidate – or whether the two had any previous dialogue prior to Tuesday's meeting at the Trump Towers.

West has continued to reaffirm his commitment to his 2020 presidential bid, however. Perhaps the rapper is planning to lean on the president-elect as a "consultant," should he decide to continue with his election pursuits.