In the final days of his presidency, Donald Trump's mind was consumed by a past beef with Snoop Dogg, Rolling Stone reports.
At the time, Snoop, who recently said he has nothing but "love and respect" for the former president, had changed his tone toward Trump.
Though Snoop bashed Trump during the early days of his presidency, including on the 2017 single “M.A.C.A. (Make America Crip Again)," the Long Beach rapper began working with Trump's administration in late 2020 and early 2021 in an effort to grant a pardon for Death Row Records co-founder Michael "Harry-O" Harris.
Harris was then serving a life sentence in prison for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and cocaine trafficking in the 1990s.
However, according to a former administration official who spoke with Rolling Stone, Trump "moaned about Snoop Dogg in the closing days of his term," telling staffers, "well, fuck him," when asked about Snoop as he related to Harris' clemency campaign.
On Jan. 18, 2021, after the clemency paperwork for Harris had already been drafted, Trump was made aware of comments Snoop gave to the Daily Beast.
"I don’t give a fuck, I tell ’em straight up, motherfucker: If you like that n***a, you motherfuckin’ racist,” Snoop said about Trump and his supporters. “Fuck you and fuck him."
In an effort to punish Snoop for his negative comments, Trump instructed his staff to remove Harris’ name from the list of those seeking pardons. Fortunately for Harris, activist Weldon Angelos, who was filming a documentary focused on the Death Row Records co-founder's clemency campaign, possessed footage of Snoop "saying complimentary things" about Trump.
“I was aware that the [Daily Beast] article caused a problem for Mr. Harris’ clemency petition, and I was asked by someone close to the White House to send a clip of a previously recorded message from Snoop where he commended Trump’s efforts on criminal justice reform,” Angelos told Rolling Stone. “The campaign to free Harry-O was recorded for documentary purposes.”
Trump was shown the footage, which resulted in the former president advising his staff to re-add Harris’ name to the pardon list. A day later, on the last day of Trump's term, Harris was a free man.
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