‘It Was Time for Me to Push Back’: Ice Cube Updates Social Media Followers with His Whereabouts After Immense Backlash for Working with the Trump Campaign

Ice Cube took to Twitter and Instagram recently to update his collective 25 million followers on “where the hell” he’s been. On Monday, Nov. 30, Cube posted a five-minute video explaining his recent absence from social media.

“I know a lot of people been wondering where I been. I was real active before the election talking about what’s needed, specifically for the Black community,” Cube said.

Photo: @icecube/Instagram

He added that he “pushed back” from social media about two weeks before the election due to the toxic environment it sometimes breeds.

“I just felt it was a lot of noise, a lot of poison, a lot of people with they own … personal agendas or party agendas and they really wanted to attack me for what I was doing because it was outside of the line of what they was doing or what they believed needed to be done,” Cube continued. “When you recognize people really don’t want to get to the truth, they just want to perpetuate their own narrative against you, it was time for me to push back.”

Cube’s comments come after he received immense backlash from many in the Black community for apparently endorsing the Donald Trump presidential campaign’s “Platinum Plan,” a thinly outlined, one-page statement of $500 billion of supposed initiatives for African-Americans weeks before the Nov. 3 presidential election. The Platinum Plan — which had no more force than any other set of politician’s campaign promises — ostensibly was intended as a package of concessions extracted by Cube and his “Contract With Black America.”

Many, like journalist Roland Martin, felt Cube had been “played” by Trump and his team just to leverage his support.

In his video, Cube claimed he didn’t care who the president was and reiterated that he just wants to make sure Black people get something for their political support because they haven’t thus far.

“That’s the agenda, to push whatever candidate’s in power, Republican or Democrat, to do what needs to be done,” Cube said. “I think we’ve just focused on one party way too long and some of us are getting taken care of with that and a lot of the community is not; and so I want to speak up when I see stuff like that.”

Cube maintains that he is still working behind the scenes with major companies and modifying his Contract With Black America. But he said he’s doing so “away from social media, because social media puts a lot of poison in the air.”

“A lot of people don’t really care about getting to the truth and the real business, they just want to figure out where they don’t agree with you and hit you with it; so I understand that game. I’m a big boy, I’m more than a rapper,” Cube said.

He added that he felt there was a “cleansing” going on in the Black community to differentiate the real from the fake and said he is watching all the people who had something negative to say about him to see what they get out of any backroom deals they might have made.

Twitter users gave mixed reactions to Cube’s post.

“You let yourself be used by conman Trump as part of his effort to divide the African American vote (along with Kanye). Don’t try to sell that as courage. You really think the next 4 years would be better for the African American community under Trump?” user @singlebaymale replied.

“Black people acting like crabs in a bucket. They will stand by. Do nothing or continually beg for a seat at the table. Cube was only saying instead of us begging. How about black people get something in exchange for our vote,” Twitter user @xSalmtru said in Cube’s defense.

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