Take a controversial rapper with a young fan base and throw his support behind a controversial right-wing president and you'll have yourself a frenzy.
"President Trump just tweeted, thanking music mogul Kanye West for his support," Jake Tapper said on CNN.
Fox News talked about West's "Praise for his 'brother' President Trump."
And multiple outlets talked about a part of a tweet from West that said of him and the president, "We are both dragon energy."
During his coverage on CNN, Tapper backtracked for clarity: "I'll just repeat that. That's not a typo. 'We are both dragon energy.'"
Now, we don't exactly know why West is a supporter of the president, but we know why the president thinks he is.
"Kanye looks and he sees black unemployment at the lowest it's been in the history of our country. OK?" President Donald Trump said on Fox News. "He sees Hispanic unemployment at the lowest it's been in the history of our country. He sees, by the way, female unemployment, women unemployment, the lowest it's been in now almost 19 years."
This calls for a fact-check.
Trump's claim that black unemployment is the lowest ever almost checks out. It's only 0.1 percent higher than the low point, and that low point came on Trump's watch.
His claim about Hispanic unemployment? Again, almost. It was at 5.1 percent in March. The low point there is 4.8 percent, which happened three times in 2017, all during Trump's presidency. It also hit that low in 2006.
The same is true for women's unemployment. It was slightly lower in October last year, but that month's figure was the lowest it had been in almost 18 years.
And experts say presidents aren't economically omnipotent. There are other factors that contribute to unemployment numbers. And it's worth noting that former President Barack Obama was in office during dramatic declines in those figures Trump cited, all of which climbed around the 2008 recession.
So, yeah, the president's list of unemployment figures are pretty close to accurate. But he doesn't deserve all the credit, and it's not a guarantee that they're the reason Kanye is a fan.
