Pastor Jamal Bryant Claims Kanye West Lost His Soul After Donald Trump Meeting?
Popular leader of Northwest Baltimore's Empowerment Temple Church, the Rev. Jamal H. Bryant, has insinuated that rapper Kanye West lost his soul after meeting with President-elect Donald Trump earlier this week.
West, the 39-year-old rap mogul made headlines last month after he voluntarily admitted himself into the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center for a psychiatric related hospitalization. He was back in the news this week when he showed up at Trump Tower in New York City on Tuesday to meet with Trump and other leaders in the black community to discuss issues affecting inner city youth and families.
While West tweeted about some multicultural issues that he discussed with Trump, Bryant had a different perspective on the meeting.
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The outspoken Maryland pastor who also made headlines this year for allegedly fathering a child out of wedlock and failing to make regular child support payments, took to his Instagram page to post an image of Trump and West who posed for photos with reporters in the lobby of Trump Tower after the meeting. Bryant added lyrics from West's 2004 song "All Falls Down" to the image which he captioned: "they made us hate ourselves and love they wealth."
He then paraphrased Matthew 16:26, saying, "What does it profit a man to gain the world and lose your soul–Jesus," he wrote to his over 100,000 Twitter followers.
On Wednesday, Bryant followed up on his Instagram post by questioning West's mental health in a Periscope video.
West, however, defended his decision to meet with Trump in a message to his millions of fans on Twitter Tuesday: "I wanted to meet with Trump today to discuss multicultural issues. These issues included bullying, supporting teachers, modernizing curriculums, and violence in Chicago. I feel it is important to have a direct line of communication with our future president if we truly want change."
On Wednesday, the entertainer tweeted an autographed copy of the latest Time magazine cover of Trump as "person of the year." The autograph reads, "to Kanye, you are a great friend. Thanks."
West is not the first Trump supporter that Bryant has spoken out against. Last year, he likened Christian leaders who met with the presidential nominee to prostitutes.
In a CNN debate with Cleveland Pastor James Davis, Bryant called his fellow preacher a pawn for attending a Trump meeting with other Christian leaders last year.
When Davis chastised Bryant for likening fellow Christian men to prostitutes, Bryant gave a scathing response which proved his disdain for Trump supporters.
"I want to apologize, because prostitutes get money. And the 100 that went in there walked away with nothing, they did it for free," he said. "So there's another word for that, and I would not use that language on a family channel."
