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Published December 23, 2015
Former President George W. Bush and country crooner Taylor Swift now have something in common: an olive branch from infamously outspoken hip hop artist Kanye West.
The former commander-in-chief revealed in an interview that he recalls the hip hopper's 2005 charge that Bush "doesn't care about black people" as a low point in his tenure as president.
"It was one of the most disgusting moments in my presidency," Bush said in an interview with Matt Lauer of the moment he heard about West's comments during a benefit telethon for victims of Hurricane Katrina. Bush explained that he interpreted the comment as a clear accusation of racism.
Bush reportedly blasts West in his new memoir, Decision Points. "I didn't appreciate it then. I don't appreciate it now...I resent it, it's not true," he told Lauer of West's accusation.
But after hearing Bush's recent reaction to his comments, West says he can relate to the former president.
"I definitely can understand the way he feels, you know, to be accused of being a racist in any way, because the same thing he happened to me," West said Wednesday in an interview with 97.9 "The Box," referring back to the aftermath of his outburst against country princess Taylor Swift.
West was vilified as -- at best, a bully -- and at worst, a racist, after he stormed the stage at the 2009 Video Music Awards to declare that Beyonce should have gotten the best female video ward instead of Swift.
The public outcry prompted the newly "more sensitive" West a year later to write a song for Swift and to express his regret over the incident in a long Twitter soliloquy a year later. It's the Swift saga, an experience that he told New York radio station Hot 97 was "bigger to me than the Bush moment," that gave him empathy, West said.
"I think we're all quick to pull the race card in America," the hip hop mogul observed of his run-in with Bush. "And now I'm more open, and the poetic justice that I feel, to have went through the same thing that he went [through] - and now I really more connect with him on just a humanitarian level."
Bush's book is slated to be released November 9.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kanye-west-says-he-connects-with-former-president-george-w-bush