Jared Kushner Confirms Meetings With Kanye West Amid Controversies With 2020 Presidential Campaign

Jared Kushner has confirmed that he's been meeting with Kanye West regularly. At a White House press conference on Thursday, the son-in-law of President Donald Trump

"So, Kanye's been a friend of mine for — I've known him for about 10 years. And, you know, we talk every now and then about different things. And we both happened to be in Colorado, and so we got together," Kushner told reporters, via Politico. "We had a great discussion about a lot of things. He has some great ideas for what he'd like to see happen in the country, and that's why he has the candidacy that he's been doing. But again, there's a lot of issues that the president's championed that he admires, and it was just great to have a friendly discussion."

Kushner was then asked if they'd discussed West's campaign, Kushner said they had "a general discussion more about policy." It's been suspected that West's attempt at a 2020 presidential campaign was simply to undercut votes from Democratic nominee Joe Biden. It's even been suggested that West is working with GOP operatives in key states to hopefully tip the electoral college in Trump's failure.

West has also confirmed that he speaks to Kushner regularly, as well as the fact that he's trying to derail Joe Biden's run for the presidency. "Jared's scared and doesn't want me to run because he knows that I can win." While the Yeezy CEO appears to have a rather odd relationship with Kushner and Trump, including referring to the White House adviser as his "boy" as a term of endearment. "I love Jared. I was just... that's my boy, you know? That's really my boy. So I prefer to not drop his name."

Meanwhile, West's actual presidential campaign (for lack of a better word) has been plagued with problems of its own. Most recently, the would-be candidate filed 3,218 signatures to get on the Illinois ballot, though an Illinois election board review found that 1,928 of those signatures were invalid. The preliminary findings will then go to a hearing examiner, whose job is to decide if West can stay on the ballot. The Illinois State Board of Elections will vote on the recommendation on Aug. 21. He also didn't file a running mate or list electors for the Electoral College, which the state also requires. Meanwhile in Wisconsin, the state Democratic Party filed a complaint about the West's nomination papers, which allegedly included signatures from "Mickey Mouse" and "Bernie Sanders."