Kim Kardashian has given her first interview since Alice Marie Johnson, a nonviolent drug offender serving a life sentence, was granted clemency by President Donald Trump after Kardashian met with him and lobbied on Johnson's behalf. Kardashian spoke to CNN's Van Jones and candidly discussed the backlash and ideas that her political activism was just a PR stunt.
"That’s very false. I mean I could literally walk outside and it’ll be some ridiculous story," Kardashian said, suggesting she doesn't need to work too hard to get publicity. "I think these days I’m trying to dodge it [the attention] and stay away from it. But you know, I have kids. Why would I spend my time away from my kids to fly in just something for a PR stunt that to a lot of people was a risky move to take going? So if there was a possibility that it could hurt my brand, I wouldn’t take that kind of PR risk."
She also dismissed the idea that Trump will use her as a political pawn. "I think Kanye has already given him legitimacy in that way so I don’t think I would be used," Kardashian, who has made it clear she disagrees with Trump's policies before, said. "And at the end of the day, he heard me out. We got the job done. So I don’t think—what could he really use me for?"
With West giving Trump legitimacy, Kardashian explained, "Kanye cosigned and said he loves his personality and loves him. And it [me working on Johnson's case] was very, very separate. Like, Kanye obviously knew what I was doing and knew that I was working on it ahead of time but so yeah, when I hear that and I’ve heard that that doesn’t really like faze me."
Kardashian also detailed the months-long process and how it all started with her calling Ivanka Trump. "I saw this seven months ago, and I have been [doing] daily phone calls with the White House, maybe a dozen emails a day trying to get letters, letter from the warden. I mean I have to give credit to where—Alice’s team has been working on this for years so I did step in late in the game so I don’t want to take away from what…everyone has brought attention to this case. And I just happened to see it on Twitter, so I do want to give credit where credit is due, to everyone who’s been working so hard on this for so long for her."
"How it all happened is I reached out to Ivanka and I said, you know, I know that you have compassion for women like this and I explained to her [Johnson’s] her story and she immediately got it and she immediately felt it and she connected me with her husband, Jared Kushner, and he has really been amazing. He listened to her story, would always ask for more details and more paperwork and letters and he was like on top of it," Kardashian added.
She also discussed how she put her personal feelings on Trump's policies aside for the meeting. "For me, I was very focused. I knew that if I have this meeting, I can’t go in there and talk about all the policies that I don’t agree with. And I’ve always had this very open dialogue with Jared about how I felt and have even been so honest [as] to say Trump is the last person I thought who would’ve done this. But he did and he pulled through and so when I got the meeting, I knew there was going to be tons of backlash. I knew people wouldn’t understand it. And at that point I had to make the decision that this was bigger than me."
Kardashian and Trump hugged when she came in, she said, and she did crack a joke about Khloe Kardashian getting kicked off The Apprentice before they got down to business. She told him Johnson's story and "he felt it, he was compassionate, he was sympathetic to her."
Kardashian got the news of the pardon when Trump called her cell phone. "I was on set of a photo shoot in New York and once I got the call from the President on my cell phone and I knew it was happening, and it was 100 percent happening, and a press release was written and it was about to go out," Kardashian recalled. She then called Alice Johnson and her team. "I had assumed that the attorneys had already told her and then Alice gets on the phone, she was paged to come to the phone inside the prison. She gets on the phone and I think she thought it was a routine phone call with her attorneys and she was surprised and excited that I was on the phone. And then I was a little bit shocked because she was calm and I had assumed she knew so I was like, ‘Wait, she doesn’t know?’ And Alice was like, ‘Know what?!’ And I was like, ‘You’re going home." At this point, Kardashian started getting emotional with Van Jones. "Like, I can like cry thinking about it. Hearing her scream was like, I know I’m going to cry so much when I see her but just to know we changed one person’s life is like, you know, we cried maybe on the phone for like, three minutes straight. Like, everyone was just crying and then—I have to get it together."
You can watch the full interview here.
Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she's not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.
