Ice Cube rejected an invite to participate in a Zoom video call with Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris.
The rapper, who has been working on a plan to help lift up the black community, said that he wanted to have a serious conversation, and that didn’t think that was possible with a bunch of other entertainers on the call.
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Ice Cube worked with White House
Ice Cube (real name O’Shea Jackson) put together a 13-point plan to help lift the black community early this summer, which he calls the “Contract with Black America.”
Both campaigns reached out to express interest after he started promoting the plan, but according to Ice Cube, President Trump’s team was willing to meet right away while the Biden campaign indicated it would talk to him after the election. Ice Cube met with the White House, which incorporated several of the rapper’s ideas into the president’s “Platinum Plan” for black Americans. That includes providing a $500 billion capital infusion into the black community, which is the biggest part of Ice Cube’s plan.
Ice Cube has been fending off criticism from the Left ever since it was revealed that he worked with the White House. He also stressed that he is not a supporter of either Trump or Biden, but he is willing to work with anyone in power to make progress on his plan.
Rejected Zoom video call invite from Kamala Harris
Ice Cube acknowledged that he had been asked to participate in a Zoom video call with Harris, but he declined.
Ice Cube said on Fox Soul’s “Cocktails with Queens” program that he’d been asked to participate in a Zoom video call with Harris, but it would have included other celebrities including D.L. Hughley, Snoop Dogg, and Killer Mike so he passed.
Fox Soul is a streaming service from Fox Television that targets African American viewers.
“We had spent a lot of people’s time putting the Contract with Black America together, and I just thought that getting on a Zoom call with 12 other entertainers all shooting what they believe needs to be done, to me wasn’t going to be productive,” Ice Cube said, explaining why he decided to not participate.
“I wanted to have a serious conversation and not just a rally-cry kinda conversation,” he said.
Ice Cube said that he had previously been promised a direct phone call from Harris that he never received, which is another reason why he felt like he didn’t want to be on the call. He also said that a prior Zoom call with the Democratic National Committee was not productive.
“When I had the Zoom call with the DNC, the Democratic Party, we was on the call for probably over 45 minutes, and we never even got to the Contract with Black America,” Ice Cube said. “We never went through any of the points that needs to be dealt with when it comes to the situation in this country.”
When the “Cocktails with Queens” hosts continued to press him to better explain why he keeps saying that he worked with Republicans because Democrats blew him off, even though he was invited to join a Zoom call, he pushed back: “I didn’t want to put anybody on blast for that, but since they [the Biden campaign] said I didn’t jump on the call, it’s because I was promised a call where we can actually deal with this in a serious matter.” Ice Cube reiterated that the Zoom invite was “just what I considered a rally call.”
“I don’t feel like I made a mistake for not being on the call [with Sen. Harris].”
Ice Cube says Republicans were willing to meet, Democrats pushed him off
Earlier in the conversation, Ice Cube laid out the timeline for how he came to work with President Trump’s team.
Ice Cube said that when he put the plan out, he was first contacted by Democrats on Sept. 8 and he got contacted by Republicans after, but, “that’s when the ball started rolling.”
“I was hoping the Democrats would be all over me, but that wasn’t the case,” he said. “Then the Republicans contacted me. And to me, if you speaking for black people, you should speak to whoever is in power or about to be in power.”
“We’ve got to push our agenda no matter who’s in there,” he said. “In a perfect world, the Biden campaign would have brought me in and we would have really talked about the plan, and they would have did great things to their plans to specifically target black people, and they chose not to.”
The half-hour interview is available on YouTube.
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