Because the simulation is broken, President Donald Trump has lately taken up the case of detained rapper A$AP Rocky, who’s been held without charges in Sweden since July 2 after a street fight. Recently, a judge ruled he could be held until July 25 without charges, and authorities have apparently deemed him a flight risk, which his Swedish lawyer Sloban Jovicic strongly insists is a false notion. Following commentary to reporters in the Oval Office that he was looking into the case, Trump has now shared that he’s spoken on the phone about it with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven and allegedly offered to “personally vouch for” the rapper’s bail “or an alternative.”
As he put it:
‘Just had a very good call with @SwedishPM Stefan Löfven who assured me that American citizen A$AP Rocky will be treated fairly. Likewise, I assured him that A$AP was not a flight risk and offered to personally vouch for his bail, or an alternative. Our teams will be talking further, and we agreed to speak again in the next 48 hours!’
The cast of characters who’ve directly urged Trump to act is wild, from celebrity couple Kanye West and Kim Kardashian to — according to the president himself — Trump’s wife, First Lady Melania Trump. Is she a fan? Is Trump making this up? Why does he even care? So many questions! Besides those figures, numerous others have been advocating more publicly to the point of an online petition demanding the rapper’s release garnering well over half a million signatures and counting.
Democratic Congressman Adriano Espaillat, who represents Harlem, where the rapper is from, has also been involved, publicly joining with fellow members of Congress Hakeem Jeffries, Joaquin Castro, and André Carson to demand that the rapper and two other men he was with at the time of the initial incident be released. The State Department has insisted that they “expect all governments, including Sweden, to treat American citizens fairly and with respect,” and another lawyer for the rapper named Alan Jackson insisted that “millions of fans worldwide are putting their trust in the State Department to get Rocky home.” The Trump administration has definitely occasionally intervened along these lines, getting hostages back from North Korea, for instance.
The rapper’s lawyer Jovicic shares that in their perspective, Rocky was just trying to defend himself from street harassment while on tour there. Jovicic insists that “my client begged and pleaded with these attackers to stop and he acted in self defense.”
Check out Twitter’s response…
Featured Image via screenshot
