(AllHipHop News) This week, Tip “T.I.” Harris returned with a new edition of his ExpediTIously podcast. The self-proclaimed King Of The South invited his long-time friend, Killer Mike, on the show for a conversation about their hometown of Atlanta, music, and a lot more.
Near the end of the episode, the discussion turned to Killer Mike recalling how his name became part of the Hillary Clinton/WikiLeaks scandal during the 2016 U.S. presidential race. The backer of ’16 Democratic candidate Senator Bernie Sanders explained how an email became a lucrative merchandising opportunity.
“[The Clinton campaign] said, ‘Killer Mike didn’t get the message.’ Then I printed it up on a t-shirt and made a bunch of money off of it,” Mike explained to Tip. “There was a time I said something in the campaign that her campaign didn’t appreciate. They used all their press agents against me to try to defile me.”
The Run The Jewels member added, “Jane Elliott, who is a woman – she made a statement that she wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton simply based on the fact she was a woman. The way she said it was just a way only a woman should say. But I repeated it at a speech and it caused a stir and controversy that really wasn’t a big deal.”
Former Secretary of State Clinton became the Democratic nominee and eventually faced off against Republican nominee Donald Trump. Throughout the general election, Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks organization released hacked private emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta which caused a rift among some Clinton supporters and Sanders supporters.
“They’ll nail you to a cross in front of the public just because it makes for good campaign fodder. Well, when Julian Assange let the WikiLeaks go on her, a WikiLeaks popped up that said, ‘I guess Killer Mike didn’t get the message.’ They threw everything against me. Just like they do people… when they’re trying to essentially cut off the head of the snake,” stated Killer Mike.
The emcee born Michael Render continued, “I pressed up that shirt. I hit my lawyers, made sure it was legal to press up. We pressed it up and called it the ‘Killer Mike iDontCheckMessages’ shirt. I made a sh*t-ton of money. So I definitely want to thank the DNC and the campaign.”
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