Reality TV star Kim Kardashian West Wednesday brought her quest for presidential clemency for an imprisoned grandmother to the White House. President Donald Trump later tweeted a photo of himself in the Oval Office with Kardashian West saying he had a "great meeting" with her to talk about "prison reform and sentencing." Earlier, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders confirmed that Kardashian West was visiting the White House but would not confirm the people with whom she was meeting. She was expected to meet with Jared Kushner, the president’s adviser and son-in-law, who has led the Trump administration’s efforts on criminal justice reform. Kardashian West began advocating on behalf of 62-year-old Alice Marie Johnson earlier this year. The grandmother was given a mandatory life sentence plus 25 years in 1997 for her part in a cocaine distribution ring, her first offense. In a statement after the visit, Kardashian West said: "I would like to thank President Trump for his time this afternoon. It is our hope that the president will grant clemency to Ms. Alice Marie Johnson who is serving a life sentence for a first-time, non-violent drug offense. We are optimistic about Ms. Johnson’s future and hopeful that she -- and so many like her -- will get a second chance at life." Kushner, whose father spent time in prison, has made prison reform a personal passion, saying he wants to help those who "have made mistakes, paid the price and are deserving of a second chance." Johnson’s daughter Tretessa had earlier told ABC News that she was grateful to Kardashian West and her legal team for working on behalf of and shining a light on her mother’s case. “She could have just saw the video or read an article or whatever and just said ‘oh that's a shame’ or whatever and went on with her life, but she didn't, she chose to get involved in a major way,” Johnson told ABC News. The Johnson family first sought clemency for Alice, unsuccessfully, from President Barack Obama, gathering letters of recommendations from her warden and from members of Congress.<doc-sep>It’s the perfect news story for our dystopian, morally, and intellectually bankrupt political reality: Rich kid turned tacky real estate tycoon turned reality TV star turned president of the United States invites rich kid turned reality TV star and Instagram product endorser to the White House, so the two can discuss prison reform. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad and dangerous. Kim Kardashian met with Donald Trump in the Oval Office this week to ask him to pardon Alice Marie Johnson, a great-grandmother serving life in prison for a first-time drug offense. Johnson’s case became a pet issue of Kardashian’s after she came across the story on social media. To her credit, Kardashian has done some real good, paying for Johnson’s legal team, bringing attention to the case, and advocating for much-need sentencing reform in the United States. And predictably, much of the coverage of the Oval Office meeting was tinged with sexism, most notably the cover of the New York Post, which, in starkly dehumanizing terms, referred to Kardashian as “The Rump” (never ones to miss a pun, headline writers also threw in “Kim Thong Un” for good measure). That kind of lazy sexist mockery makes it tempting to defend Kardashian’s White House visit. After all, we want civic-minded celebrities to use their platforms to help shift the national conversation about crucial issues, and to use their immense wealth to help those in need. This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. Tomorrow's cover: Kim Kardashian visits the White House to discuss prison reform with President Trump https://t.co/1N3bNkVmK7 pic.twitter.com/yPaL93Tyhe — New York Post (@nypost) May 30, 2018 But we shouldn’t want them to assume the role of expert when they aren’t. That’s ego, not activism. With our reality-star president and his radically under-qualified team supporting him–Jared Kushner as Middle East peace envoy, Ivanka Trump as formal advisor and informal pseudo-feminist-in-residence–it’s easy to forget that, once upon a time, expertise and experience mattered. With Trump as president, there’s a kind of “if he can do it, anyone can” ethos infiltrating politics more broadly. “Ever since Trump won, it proved that I could be president,” raps Kardashian’s husband, Kanye West, on a song released last month, justifying West’s support of the president, and reflecting what a number of Americans seem to like about Trump. The problem is, Trump can’t do it. His inadequacies are readily apparent, and he’s doing enormous damage not just policy-wise, but to the confidence Americans have in our elected officials, our political institutions, our civil servants, and the federal government. Populist backlashes often take aim at the technocrats and the experts; it certainly doesn’t help that the Republican Party has spent the past several decades undermining public education and sowing resentment aimed at the supposed “elite,” which is basically code for college-educated, diverse-city-dwelling Americans. At the same time, they’ve taken aim at science and reality itself: climate change skepticism is practically tattooed on the heart of the GOP; conservatives continue to push for abstinence-only sex education despite ample evidence that those programs are don’t work and may in fact drive teen pregnancy rates; and for 20 years, Republicans have blocked efforts to even study gun violence and continue to insist, against the weight of the evidence, that America’s gun death crisis is not caused by our masses of guns. Right-wing media outlets have also made anti-intellectualism their bread and butter, from the conspiracy theories of Alex Jones to the monotonous hum of Fox News anchors complaining about liberal college campuses and news media (not pausing to consider that perhaps the right-wing assault on facts, science, and reality plays a role in “liberal” being shorthand for “someone who values truth and education”). Taken in the aggregate, this has been devastating to American intellect, culture, and social cohesion–we can’t even agree on the same set of facts as a starting point. When half the country looks toward science, evidence, established human rights norms, and policies we’ve seen work well elsewhere, while the other relies on a distorted storybook history, what feels true, and propagandized “alternative facts,” as Kellyanne Conway memorably called the lies and obfuscations of the Trump White House, we have a big problem. While people around the world struggle to educate their children and imagine the American university system as a beacon of hope, a majority of Republicans now say that colleges have a negative effect on the country. Getty Images Enter Kim Kardashian. In an administration where expertise isn’t just optional but suspect, of course a reality TV star is the person the president invites for a conversation on sentencing reform. That she was invited in the first place is ludicrous. But hey, she has a platform that improbably gave her access to the most powerful man in the world, about a topic that shapes the lives of millions of Americans. She could have done what, for example, the celebrity women of the #TimesUp movement did and brought longtime activists and experts along to shape strategy and keep the publicity where it belongs (the actor George Clooney made a similar call when he met with President Barack Obama about the Sudanese civil war–his name made the headlines, but human rights activist John Prendergast accompanied him). Had Kardashian insisted that the meeting include, say, someone from the Sentencing Project or the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, she might have made a more effective case for broad systematic change. Instead, she let herself be the avatar for an issue that lawyers, activists, and experts have been working tirelessly on for years, losing a crucial opportunity for real impact. Celebrities have long taken up causes, including this one–John Legend wrote to President Barack Obama on this same issue. That and Kardashian’s activism are to be applauded. Notably, though, Obama convened experts, delegated authority, and came up with a series of comprehensive plans for both drug reform and criminal justice reform. Neither set of policies went far enough, but they were never about attention-grabbing tweets or celebrity glad-handing. Last year, the Harvard Law Review published commentary from Obama himself on the president’s role in criminal justice reform. That it’s easier to imagine a sitting president getting policy advice from Kim Kardashian than it is to picture him writing a law review article on criminal justice reform is a sad barometer of how quickly this administration has turned the important work of governance into a charade. This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. I would like to thank President Trump for his time this afternoon. It is our hope that the President will grant clemency to Ms. Alice Marie Johnson who is serving a life sentence for a first-time, non-violent drug offense. — Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) May 31, 2018 This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. We are optimistic about Ms. Johnson’s future and hopeful that she —and so many like her—will get a second chance at life. — Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) May 31, 2018 In such a toxic administration, it’s tempting to be heartened by the president meeting with someone who, at the very least, has her heart in the right place on a critical issue–she may be a reality TV star, but she’s not a virulent white supremacist, and that’s something. But in grasping for these thin rays of hope in an ugly political reality, we miss the fact that “better than nothing” is still far away from what should be normal. And in fact, it might be worse: When progressives cheer for celebrities not as figureheads with actual activists and experts behind them but as the people who go to the White House as experts themselves, we reinforce a new normal wherein facts are malleable, experience is optional, and expertise is disqualifying. This is how we got President Trump. And if we don’t insist that intellect, knowledge, and proficiency still matter—including (perhaps especially) for people with whom we agree—the office of the presidency and the whole of the country may never recover. Jill Filipovic is the author of . Follow her on Twitter. Jill Filipovic senior political writer Jill Filipovic is a contributing writer for cosmopolitan.com This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io<doc-sep>
(CNN) — Kim Kardashian West met with President Donald Trump and other officials, including senior adviser Jared Kushner, at the White House on Wednesday to discuss prison reform. “Great meeting with @KimKardashian today, talked about prison reform and sentencing,” the President tweeted following the afternoon meeting, posting a picture alongside a stoic Kardashian West in the Oval Office. Kardashian West, who wore a black suit with bright yellow stilettos, was spotted leaving the White House with a small entourage about an hour after she arrived. She departed in a black Chevrolet SUV parked inside White House grounds, a surprising level of access and courtesy. VIP guests of the White House usually are required to walk through a gate to board their vehicles. Though she did not roll down her windows to greet a gaggle of cameras awaiting her departure, an aide in the front seat was seen recording the reporters on a phone. During the White House press briefing Wednesday afternoon, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders wouldn’t provide further details on who Kardashian West was meeting, only saying, “She is expected to be here at the White House. I can confirm she’ll be here. We’ll keep you posted on any meetings that take place and what those look like.” The entrepreneur and reality television star has advocated for a pardon for a low-level drug offender named Alice Marie Johnson, who has served more than 20 years in prison. Earlier Wednesday, Kardashian West tweeted, “Happy Birthday Alice Marie Johnson. Today is for you,” adding the prayer hands emoji. “I would like to thank President Trump for his time this afternoon. It is our hope that the President will grant clemency to Ms. Alice Marie Johnson who is serving a life sentence for a first-time, non-violent drug offense,” Kardashian West said in a statement Wednesday night. “We are optimistic about Ms. Johnson’s future and hopeful that she – and so many like her – will get a second chance at life.” Prison reform has been a key issue for Kushner. Earlier this month, the White House-backed First Step Act, which would expand programs for prisoners and allow for more home confinement, was approved by the House Judiciary Committee. Kardashian West said she supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, but her husband, rapper Kanye West, has signaled his support for Trump. In 2016, West met with the President-elect at Trump Tower in New York. And last month, after releasing a photograph wearing a “Make America Great Again” cap, West released a song defending his praise of the President. Kardashian West’s White House visit was earlier reported by Vanity Fair.