Last year, Kim Kardashian West played a pivotal role in the release of Alice Marie Johnson — a 63-year-old woman who was serving a life sentence for a first-time, nonviolent drug offence — from prison.
After hearing about Johnson's story on social media, Kardashian West rallied her lawyers and got involved with an advocacy group to campaign for her release.
Kardashian West's campaign ended with her making a trip to the White House where she successfully lobbied President Donald Trump to grant Johnson clemency.
Great meeting with @KimKardashian today, talked about prison reform and sentencing.
Later that week, Alice was released to family and friends. Kim has since had two more meetings with Trump — she attended the State of the Union in February and returned to the White House in June to speak about criminal justice reform.
At the time of her first visit, Kardashian West — who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 and has denounced many of Trump's policies — revealed that she'd deliberated over the pros and cons of meeting with the president.
They don’t have power to watch the news!!! Please stop tweeting & golfing while people are dying! Please step up & help! https://t.co/AP8PnapWaO
Speaking to Variety, she said: "I did consider the fact that I would get a lot of backlash if I went to the White House. For me, if it's a life versus my reputation, people talk shit about me all day long. I didn't really care. What more could they say about me, really?"
However, that didn't stop the inevitable backlash, with many people accusing her of supporting Trump — especially since her husband, Kanye West, had publicly aligned himself with the president a few months earlier.
Well, now the Wests' long-time friends, John Legend and Chrissy Teigen have spoken out on the subject, revealing that they feel "torn" over her meetings with Trump.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, Legend said that while Kardashian West's work on prison reform is positive for those involved, he still believes Trump is a "terrible human being".
"It's a cheap win for Trump," Legend said, "But the people being granted clemency are real people with families. So even if the clemency is won through his celebrity-whore tendencies, it's still helpful for that family and that person. At the same time, he's locking kids in cages and he's a terrible human being."
Teigen added that she wasn't sure if she'd be able to put her personal feelings about Trump aside for the "greater good" if she were in Kardashian West's shoes.
She said: "To be able to go in there and put whatever you hate about him aside to do this greater good for this person? I don't know if I could physically muster that smile and handshake."
And Legend went on to address his public fallout with Kanye West over his repeated support of Trump just a month before Kardashian West's first visit to the White House.
In April 2018, West shared screenshots of text messages from Legend in which he pleaded with the rapper to "reconsider aligning" himself with Trump.
"I hope you’ll reconsider aligning yourself with Trump," he wrote. “You’re way too powerful and influential to endorse who he is and what he stands for. As you know, what you say really means something to your fans."
However, while West tweeted to say that he "appreciated the discourse" with Legend, he wasn't going to change his mind on Trump.
I tweeted the John text to show that there are people around me that disagree with me and voice their opinion. I respect everyone's opinion but I stand my ground.
Speaking about the incident for the first time, Legend told Vanity Fair: "I’m not trying to disown Kanye because I still love him and love everything we’ve done together creatively. But we were never the closest of friends."
He went on: "I think what was always challenging about it was Kanye has never been political. I don’t think he knows one way or another what policies of Trump's he likes. He just kind of embraced Trump's blow-it-all-up spirit and the energy of himself being countercultural in supporting him."
