Nick Cannon says Democrats are the “party of the KKK” while praising Trump

Nick Cannon has twelve children by six different women. He has a talk show. He has, by most accounts, a career that refuses to flatline no matter how many times the internet begs it to. But apparently, what he doesn’t have is a functioning understanding of American political history, or, more likely, the self-awareness to realize that parroting MAGA talking points on a web series with Amber Rose might make him look less like a free thinker and more like a guy who just discovered the “Southern Strategy” chapter was due at midnight and decided to wing it.

On a recent episode of his web talk show Big Drive, Cannon sat across from model and newly-minted conservative darling Amber Rose as she declared that Democrats “don’t care about people of color and the Republicans do.” Cannon, nodding like a bobblehead at a Trump rally, agreed.

“People don’t know that the Democrats are the party of the KKK,” Cannon said. “People don’t know that the Republicans are the party that freed the slaves.”

And just like that, a man with a net worth reportedly in the tens of millions managed to deliver a history lesson so incomplete it would get a C-minus in a community college night class.

Because here’s the thing Nick, and Amber, and the growing chorus of washed-adjacent celebrities suddenly finding Jesus in a red hat, seem to conveniently sidestep: One would think you’d be less concerned with who started the Klan and more concerned with who the Klan supports right now.

The Half-Truth Heist

On paper, Nick Cannon is not technically wrong. The Democratic Party of the 1860s did count among its ranks the white supremacist factions that would birth the Ku Klux Klan. And yes, the Republican Party was founded by anti-slavery activists. Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The 13th Amendment was passed. All of this is true.

It’s also true that a gallon of milk cost $3.50 in 2005, but nobody’s walking into a grocery store today expecting to pay that. Context changes, parties shift, and in the case of American politics, they did something far more consequential than pivot: they swapped places.

What Nick conveniently omitted, whether out of ignorance, willful deception, or the kind of intellectual laziness that comes with raising a dozen children while trying to stay relevant, is the part where the Dixiecrats, the segregationists, and every Klansman worth his hood abandoned the Democratic Party en masse after Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

They didn’t retire, and now they did not suddenly see the light. They rebranded, called themselves “Christian conservatives” and found a new home in the Republican Party, which welcomed them with open arms by the Southern Strategy that gave us Ronald Reagan, Willie Horton ads, and the modern GOP’s not-so-secret love affair with dog whistles.

So when Nick Cannon dusts off a 160-year-old flex about Republicans freeing the slaves, he’s essentially bragging that his favourite basketball team won a championship before the invention of the three-point line. Technically correct, but completely irrelevant to who’s on the court right now.

The David Duke Rule

There’s a very simple test for anyone trying to pull this “Democrats are the real racists” routine. Ask them: Who does the modern Klan endorse?

Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke ran for office as a Republican. He endorsed Donald Trump in 2016. When Trump hesitated to condemn him, Duke called it “one of the most exciting nights of my life.” In 2024, the pattern held. The Klan’s contemporary iterations, the Loyal White Knights, the various splinter groups that still burn crosses in the dark, they’re not holding fundraisers for AOC. They’re not sending thank-you cards to the DNC. They’re voting red, and they’re doing it proudly.

But Nick and Amber don’t want to talk about that. Because that would require moving past the first page of their Google search and acknowledging that the Republican Party hasn’t been “the party of Lincoln” in any meaningful way since roughly the year Black people were allowed to sit at lunch counters.

As one observer put it: “We cannot deny that the KKK was started by farmer Confederates in 1865 in Tennessee. And for the next 100 years, they were a part of the Democratic Party. But they all fled to the Republican Party in 1964 over civil rights. Yes, dear grandparents were Jim Crow Democrats. What this shows is that racists will take the path of least resistance. And since 1964, that path has been within the Republican Party.”

A Pattern of Tap-Dancing

Nick Cannon is not alone in this particular form of amnesia. He joins a growing roster of Black celebrities who’ve suddenly discovered their inner conservative just as their mainstream relevance begins to flicker. It’s a pattern so predictable you could set your watch to it.

Amber Rose, once known for feminism and headline-grabbing relationships, now sits across from Cannon nodding along to MAGA talking points. Chilli from TLC is donating to MAGA. Waka Flocka Flame, who spent years begging forgiveness for his Trump support, now wants us to forget. Kanye West went full Nazi and, for reasons that defy psychology, still has defenders. Nicki Minaj appeared with Turning Point USA and praised “our President.” Even J. Cole, whose whole brand is quiet introspection, managed to give Diddy a pass while the culture watched.

There’s a cynical calculus here that’s worth naming. When celebrities fade from the cultural spotlight, when the hits stop hitting, when the tours stop selling out, when the last generation stops caring, the Right offers a form of relevance. It’s a shortcut to attention. The bar for success in conservative media is significantly lower. All you have to do is say something outrageous about the left, and Fox News will book you. One America News Network will run clips. X accounts with blue checks and cartoon frog avatars will call you brave. It’s a trade: cultural relevance in exchange for your credibility. And for some, the math works out.

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What Are We Supposed to Do With This?

There’s a temptation to write all of this off as celebrity nonsense, just another episode of rich people saying stupid things for attention. And to some extent, that’s accurate. Nick Cannon’s political opinions don’t matter in the way that, say, voting rights legislation matters. He’s an entertainer. His job is to be loud and provoke reactions.

But the problem is that these voices do have reach. They do shape perception. When a Black man with millions of followers tells his audience that Democrats are the “party of the KKK,” some people will believe him. They won’t fact-check, nor would they pull up the history of the Southern Strategy. They’ll just file it away as truth, because it came from a face they recognize.

And that’s the danger. Not that Nick Cannon is stupid, though he’s certainly acting like it, but that his stupidity has consequences.

Because here’s the thing: when MAGA starts really falling apart—when the unpopularity of this administration finally catches up, when the economy sours, when the coalition of billionaires and culture warriors begins to fracture—people like Nick Cannon will want to come back. They’ll want to be welcomed into the culture they spent years distancing themselves from. They’ll claim they were just asking questions, just being independent, just trying to see both sides. And the rest of us will have to decide whether we let them.