The Internet exploded over a surprise supposed Trump endorser recently, and that was none other than Chingy. He was trending on Twitter this past Friday (Jan. 22) when he supposedly endorsed the Donald on the social media platform, tweeting, “I vote for @realDonaldTrump,” but claims that his comments were misunderstood. In a new interview, Chingy explains his tweet, and how it really related to a news article.
According to the rapper, he read an article about Donald Trump where the controversial Republican candidate was advocating to eradicate terrorism from the United States and preserve Medicare benefits for American citizens. Chingy said that while he agrees with both of these concepts, he isn’t a staunch supporter of Trump’s campaign as a whole.
Unfortunately for Chingy, his comments were gravely misunderstood, instigating some major Twitter backlash with multiple news outlets spreading the belief that he supports Trump like wildfire. While many criticized Chingy for supporting a candidate with such a negative view towards minority groups, the rapper claims that he was unaware of the majority of Trump’s views and only supported the two he had read about in theory. In a effort to quell the controversy, Chingy even released an apology video.
Politics vs society. People should innerstand that politics is a business jus like the job you work at. I vote for @realDonaldTrump "YEP" 3
— ChingyJackpot (@ChingyJackpot) January 22, 2016
“I didn’t know about some of the negative things he had to say about some of the races out here and about the hip-hop community,” Chingy explained to Billboard. “I didn’t know a lot of the negative things, I was kind of commenting off reading that article and reading some of the good things that he said, so that’s kind of where my comments came from.”
He further said, “Every now and then I see some of it on TV. I’m not familiar with exactly how it’s going down. And that’s another reason why I didn’t know a lot of the negative things he said. Like a lot of people comparing him to Hitler and stuff and a lot of those things, I didn’t know these things. So when I seen the good he said, I was like, ‘Oh that’s cool that Donald Trump be trying to do that.”
