Examining Kim Kardashian-West's Influence on Trump - TeenVogue.com

Before July 19, no one would’ve imagined that A$AP Rocky would be on Donald Trump’s radar.

Nineteen days after the touring rapper was detained for a scuffle in Sweden, allegedly in self-defense, the president tweeted this: “Just spoke to @KanyeWest about his friend A$AP Rocky’s incarceration. I will be calling the very talented Prime Minister of Sweden to see what we can do about helping A$AP Rocky.” Two days later, Trump updated his timeline, sharing that his talk with Prime Minister Stefan Löfven was “very good” and offering to “personally vouch for [Rocky’s] bail or an alternative.”

A change.org petition demanding A$AP’s release had already been circulating, drumming up buzz that crept out of the celebrity realm and into the political. Kanye West was immediately cited as the cause for Trump’s awareness, but there was another prominent figure making requests in his ear on Rocky’s behalf: his wife, Kim Kardashian-West. 

In 2018, Kardashian-West began her public pivot from selling lip kits and body-con fare to advocating for criminal justice reform. Her lane switch started with the announcement that she helped the convicted nonviolent drug trafficker Alice Marie Johnson, get released. The work was done quietly, but the announcement was huge.

“It became this mission that I didn’t want to give up,” Kardashian-West told CBS News about Johnson’s release, which took seven months to be granted. “I called Ivanka [Trump], and we had a really great conversation about women and wanting to help each other. And I knew that she would have understood Alice. She was immediately so receptive and so great.” Kardashian-West’s conversation with Trump’s daughter led to her first meeting at the White House.

“To me, this has nothing to do with politics. This has to do with people,” Kardashian-West said about working with Trump.

As expected, her ease of access to the commander-in-chief was met with hesitance, and understandably so. Was this reality TV behemoth really about to get one of America’s most divisive presidents to do good?

“I appreciate the interest and the Kardashian-Wests lending their celebrity and their resources to criminal justice reform, if we can call it that,” says Teddy Tinson, a journalist, activist, and founder of Young, Gifted, Black & Queer (YGBQ), a support network and legal defense fund for marginalized LGBTQIA+ people of color.

Thanks in no small part to Kardashian-West’s advocacy, Trump granted Johnson clemency, commuting her sentence and letting her go free (the other type of clemency is a pardon). When the great-grandmother, 64, took her final walk from Alabama’s Federal Correctional Institution Aliceville on June 7, 2018 — where she spent 21 years of her life — it was not only a moment of victory for her and her family, but for those vigorously working to right the wrongs of America’s flawed penal system. But it should be noted that Johnson’s case is highly unusual.

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