Nick Cannon Praises Trump, Calls Democrats the Party of the KKK

Nick Cannon has spent years building a brand on holding multiple contradictions at once: twelve children, several careers, zero apologies. His politics, it turns out, are no different.

On a Friday episode of his web talk show "Big Drive," the actor and rapper delivered a blunt assessment of American political life that drew immediate backlash and wide attention. Sitting across from model Amber Rose, who had recently switched her party affiliation to Republican, Cannon agreed that Democrats "don't care about people of color and the Republicans do" before going further than his guest.

"I agree with you 100%," Cannon said. "People don't know that the Democrats are the party of the KKK. People don't know that the Republicans are the party that freed the slaves."

He didn't stop there. Cannon said he backs President Donald Trump, describing the administration's second-term moves with approval: "motherfucker's cleaning house" and is "doing what he said he was gonna do." He framed Trump's immigration fees with characteristically irreverent humor: "We got the Gulf of America now. He's like the club. He's charging a $5 million bottle service fee to get into the country."

The remarks landed as a surprise partly because of history. Cannon had previously called Trump, whom he referred to as "47," a "bully," after Trump publicly said supermodel Heidi Klum wasn't a "10." Friday's episode marked a notable shift in tone, even if Cannon stopped well short of calling himself a Republican.

That caveat was the throughline of his argument. Cannon said he does not subscribe to either party, instead invoking the political philosophy of sociologist and Pan-African activist W.E.B. Du Bois, who said in 1956 that he didn't believe in two political parties and that they were all "just one evil organization under two different names." Cannon echoed that framing directly: "I don't subscribe to either party. I rock with W. E. B. Du Bois, when he said there's no such thing as two parties. It's just one evil party with two different names."

Cannon's core historical claim carries a degree of accuracy and a significant asterisk. Democrats in the Reconstruction-era South did maintain close ties to the Ku Klux Klan and resisted racial equality through the 1950s. However, Democrats did not found the Klan, and the party underwent a dramatic political realignment in the 1960s, when Southern Democrats, known as Dixiecrats, broke away from the party. The Republican Party's modern composition and policy agenda bear little resemblance to the party of Abraham Lincoln's era, a shift that historians have documented extensively.

Rose's presence added context to Cannon's remarks. Her switch to the Republican Party was itself a recent and public move, and her assertion that Democrats had abandoned Black voters served as the prompt that drew out Cannon's most pointed language. His agreement with her framing was unambiguous.

The episode generated swift coverage across entertainment and political media, with several outlets flagging the remarks as sparking backlash. Cannon, for his part, offered no indication he was retreating from anything he said, describing his position as independent thought rather than partisan allegiance. Whether that framing holds up under sustained scrutiny may depend on which party he decides to antagonize next.