Whether you love or hate President Donald Trump, you have to acknowledge his actions on criminal justice reforms. You can say the same about Kim Kardashian West.
West, who endorsed Hillary Clinton, went on The View this morning. She not only talked about her activist work in criminal justice reform but also praised Trump for signing the First Step Act.
Trump signed the First Step Act in December. From AEI:
The revised legislation does just that. The bill maintains House-passed provisions that improve federal prison policy while providing “down-payments” on much needed sentencing reform. In addition to banning the horrific and destructive practice of shackling pregnant inmates during child birth, the bill would give judges greater discretion in the use of mandatory minimum sentences, extend retroactively a 2010 law that eliminated sentencing disparities for cocaine-related drug offenses, and curtail the use of “stacking” by federal prosecutors who add firearms charges even when a weapon was not discharged during a criminal act.
The bill also expands “programs designed to discourage recidivism [tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend] and limit juvenile solitary confinement.”
There was no doubt this topic would come up on the liberal heavy show. After all how could anyone work with Trump on anything?
Conservative Meghan McCain asked West about the backlash she received from her Hollywood kin. Note how The Daily Beast wrote that West answered the questions “carefully:”
“You got a lot of heat from a lot of people,” Meghan McCain noted before stressing that she believes in “bipartisanship on a basic level” and thinks “we’re not going to get anything done unless we’re listening to two different voices.” She asked their guest, “Were you worried about any backlash you were going to get because you did this bill with President Trump?”“I definitely was aware,” Kardashian answered carefully. “But for me any of my issues have always been more about the people and not about the politics. And so for me to think that I couldn’t go and speak to the man that has the power to change people’s lives because of some opinions I may have of certain policies and issues, to me felt very self-centered.”“That I was more worried about my reputation than saving someone’s life,” she continued, referring to Alice Marie Johnson, who ultimately had her life sentence commuted by the president. “And so I put that all out the door, and I thought, you know what? I’m going to choose her over my reputation.”
McCain, who has no love for Trump, retorted that Trump “tends to listen to celebrities,” which led her to praise West for using her status to change Trump’s mind.
However, West reminded McCain and the others Trump also deserves credit:
“I felt like I had an open opportunity to do that,” she said, “and from the president going from being really harsh on his stance on prison reform to changing and actually signing the First Step Act and getting that bill passed, was amazing.”
In June, the US Sentencing Commission released its first report related to the First Step Act. Under the law, 91.3% of those freed inmates were African American.
In July, the Department of Justice announced the release of 3,100 inmates due to Trump’s criminal justice reform. These inmates gained their freedom “because of a change in how their good-behavior time is calculated.”
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