WATCH: Ice Cube Tells Story About Disputed Zoom Call with Cedric Richmond, Turning Down Call with Kamala Harris
Rap and film star Ice Cube spoke in detail about the content of the Zoom call he participated in with Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA) and also explained why he turned down a similar call with Senator and vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Cube is at the center of a weeks-long controversy that began when he was outed as an adviser on the Trump campaign’s “Platinum Plan” for Black America, and publicly embraced the campaign’s embrace. Cube made clear he is not endorsing Trump, but praised the campaign for making “adjustments” to its plan that he could not specifically identify when pressed.
Despite his protestations, Cube’s involvement with the Trump campaign has led some — including President Donald Trump and his son Eric Trump — to promote him as an ally. It has also led some to criticize him as a “sellout,” a charge he disputed in a Fox News interview.
The latest development is his dispute with Richmond, who told SiruisXM host Joe Madison that Cube was not told to wait until after the election to make demands, but that his plan needed to be fleshed out. In response, Cube demanded he release video of the Zoom call.
“Instead of going back and forth Congressman, please release the Zoom meeting so the world can see what was said by all,” he wrote on Twitter Tuesday.
As it happens, though, Cube spoke at length about that call in a recent interview, as well as his decision to turn down a call with Sen. Harris — and did not mention being told to wait until after the election.
In a wide-ranging discussion with a panel of Black women on Fox Soul’s Cocktails with Queens, Cube was first asked why he turned down participating in the Kamala Harris call, the answer to which was, in part, that he didn’t get a promised personal call with the senator or senior staff.
“Kamala Harris’s folks reached out to you and wanted you to be on this Zoom call because they thought your voice was important. Why did you choose to not participate in that?” asked host Claudia Jordan.
“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,” Cube said, and added his lawyer “has a connection with Kamala Harris, and I was promised a call that I never received. So that’s why I didn’t feel like I wanted to be on that Zoom call.”
He went on to mention the expected one-one call a second time, and when pressed, also said “I want to get things done, I don’t want to just spin my wheels, talk to people who can’t really make it happen.”
“She’s the vice-presidential candidate,” Jordan pointed out.
“Listen, listen, because I had the conversations,” Cube protested, and then described the call he now disputes with Rep. Richmond.
“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,” 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.”
He then circled back to complain again about the promised call, and said “I don’t feel like I made a mistake for not being on the call [with Sen. Harris].”
Elsewhere in the interview, the women confronted Cube over his plan’s lack of specificity with regard to Black women, a subject they revisited at the end of the show. Cube alternately asked them to write that part of the plan for them, then offered to write it for them.
“I’ll write up the Black woman’s part of the contract for you,” he said, and asked “how many words do y’all want it to be?”
Here’s how that went over.
You can read Ice Cube’s “Contract with Black America” here, Trump’s “Platinum Plan” here, and Joe Biden’s “Lift Every Voice: The Biden Plan for Black America” here.
Watch the clip above via Fox Soul.
