Trump To Swedish Prime Minister: I’ll “Personally Vouch” For Jailed Rapper A$AP Rocky
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President Donald Trump is vowing to help free A$AP Rocky from a Swedish jail, after the Grammy-nominated rapper was arrested in connection with a street fight in Stockholm.
In a Saturday tweet, Trump said he spoke with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven about the rapper’s case. Rocky, real name Rakim Mayers, has been jailed since July 2.
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“Just had a very good call with @SwedishPM Stefan Löfven who assured me that American citizen A$AP Rocky will be treated fairly. Likewise, I assured him that A$AP was not a flight risk and offered to personally vouch for his bail, or an alternative,” Trump tweeted.
In a second tweet, POTUS said the two sides had agreed to hold additional talks.
“Our teams will be talking further, and we agreed to speak again in the next 48 hours!” he added.
….Our teams will be talking further, and we agreed to speak again in the next 48 hours!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 20, 2019
Trump’s posts came a day after Stockholm’s District Court decided Rocky should remain in custody for another week while Swedish police finish their investigation. They have until July 25.
The president said he intervened at the request of first lady Melania Trump and celebrities, including Kanye West.
A$AP Rocky was taken into custody after voluntarily going to a police station for questioning after video of the confrontation went viral.
Footage of the incident showed the New York rapper grabbing a man and tossing him to the ground. Rocky said only part of the video had been posted online by gossip websites. In response, he uploaded his own clips of the brawl to Instagram, saying he was defending himself because he was attacked by “drug addicts.”
“So a few drug addicts are not my fans. We don’t know these guys and we didn’t want trouble, they followed us for 4 blocks,” he captioned his post.
A post shared by PRETTY FLACKO (@asaprocky) on Jul 2, 2019 at 7:56am PDT
In the video, both Rocky and his bodyguard repeatedly tell the men to go away because they don’t want to fight them. In a second video, posted by the rapper, a man hits his bodyguard with a pair of headphones and a scuffle ensues.
The hip-hop star was in Stockholm to perform at a music festival.
A Change.org petition demanding his release was signed by more than 620,000 people as of Saturday afternoon.
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