Outspoken musician Kanye West made the suggestion to President Donald Trump to replace Air Force One with a new hydrogen-powered plane to be worked on by Apple, with the idea shown off via iPhone during an Oval Office meeting.
The Thursday meeting between West and Trump at the famed Oval Office covered a number of topics, but one notable highlight was a pitch by the noted rapper that the President should upgrade Air Force One to a craft West calls "The iPlane 1."
Unlocking his iPhone XS, Vice News reports West proceeded to show images of the plane to Trump, declaring it to be a "Hydrogen-powered plane," and "this is what our President should be flying."
Trump's response seemed to involve jokingly asking the attending press photographers "So get rid of Air Force One?"
"It's called the iPlane 1." pic.twitter.com/X4C9mvk6H6
-- VICE News (@vicenews) October 11, 2018
West then asserted "We're gonna have Apple, an American company, work on this plane with..." without completing the statement, before chastising commentators and NBC's "Saturday Night Live" for not understanding "If he (Trump) don't look good, we (America) don't look good."
"This is our President. He has to be the freshest, the flyest. The flyest planes," West continued, before bringing up employment and prison.
While Apple does have some transportation projects in the works, such as Project Titan, as well as its employees working on activities outside of computing, it is doubtful the company is working on hydrogen-powered planes or similar technologies.
Earlier in October, West made a bizarre claim on Twitter claiming the "YZY" brand being effectively owned by Apple, despite the fact that it isn't. The tweet referred to Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook, and Laurene Powell Jobs, while a later "clarification" mentions Eddie Cue and "All 123 thousand {Apple} crew members."
One confirmed fact that transpired from the meeting was that Mr. West seemed unconcerned about device security. As clearly captured on video, West's passcode on his phone is "000000."
West and Apple
Kanye West may now be an Apple fan but previously he has had different views. He did boast in 2016 that his wife Kim Kardashian's Kimoji app "just shut down the app store, uh! And we made a million a minute."
Kardashian herself repeated that claim several times, despite Apple issuing a statement saying "there were absolutely no issues with the App Store."
At the same time, West criticized Nike, the only sportswear firm to have an official partnership with Apple, but he has long kept up this his praise of Steve Jobs. Speaking to Vogue magazine, he said in 2015 that: "One of my dreams was to be the head creative director of the Gap. I'd like to be the Steve Jobs of the Gap When I say Steve Jobs of the Gap, as I talk to the people at the Gap right now, I'm not talking about a capsule. I'm talking about full Hedi Slimane creative control of the Gap is what I would like to do."
Slimane is a photographer and fashion designer who at the time of that interview was creative director for Yves Saint Laurent.