Kim and Hillary Take DC

Kim Kardashian Endorses Hillary Despite Genocide Disagreement

Kim Kardashian endorses Hillary Clinton with a selfie, despite their past policy disagreements. Really.

Kim Kardashian has endorsed Hillary Clinton. Being a Kardashian, she has done so with a selfie.

When asked recently if she thinks Clinton should be America’s first female president, she enthusiastically replied, “I hope so!” And on the night of the first 2016 Republican presidential debate, Kardashian (featuring Kanye) had the opportunity to fan-girl all over Hillary—“our next President,” as Kim would say.

(Clinton reportedly broke protocol in order to achieve that power-selfie.)

It does make sense that the reality-TV star/socialite would be Ready for Hillary. Kardashian is liberal, having evolved from her previous stance as a self-identified “liberal Republican” a few years back. She sided with the Democrats in the last midterm elections, and supports President Obama.

However, there is one important caveat to Kardashian’s endorsement. During her time as Secretary of State, Clinton had used her power and influence to work against the very political cause about which Kardashian is most passionate: recognition of the Armenian genocide, during which the Ottoman government killed more than 1 million souls during and after World War I.

Earlier this year, Kardashian—herself of Armenian descent—traveled to Armenia just before the 100th anniversary of the mass slaughter to get in touch with her roots and to visit the genocide memorial in Yerevan. Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan personally received her and her family, and praised her for aiding in the “international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian genocide.”

“It happened before Rwanda, Darfur, and the Holocaust,” Kardashian blogged in a post slamming the Turkish government for genocide denial in 2011. “Maybe none of those other genocides would have happened if more nations had condemned the Armenian Genocide, when 1.5 million Armenians were massacred.”

Clinton’s track record as a senator on this subject would be agreeable to someone with Kardashian’s views. During her 2008 campaign, she issued a statement boasting that “alone among the [2008] presidential candidates, I have been a long-standing supporter of the Armenian Genocide Resolution.”

But after she landed the job of Secretary of State in the Obama administration, international politics and diplomacy started getting in the way. Secretary Clinton, unlike Sen. Clinton, stopped tossing out the term “genocide” when discussing the matter in public.

“It’s a shift that illustrates the difficulty Clinton faced balancing the interests of the Turks and collective memory,” Taylor Wofford reported in Newsweek in April. “Clinton needed to woo Turkey, a U.S. ally and fellow NATO member, on issues ranging from the Iraq War to interdicting drug trafficking to pushing back against Vladimir Putin. And, historically, nothing has riled the Turks quite like calling what happened between 1915 and 1917 a genocide.”

When the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide in 2010, Secretary Clinton voiced her opposition.

“The Obama administration strongly opposes the resolution that was passed by only one vote in the House committee and will work very hard to make sure it does not go to the House floor,” she said. (It did not make it to the House floor.)

Still, Clinton’s position during her time at the State Department may not have dampened Kardashian’s support all that much. After all, she has been a dedicated Obama supporter, even as she called him out over the issue. “I would like President Obama to use the word genocide,” she wrote in a Time op-ed published last April. “It’s very disappointing he hasn’t used it as President. We thought it was going to happen this year. I feel like we’re close—but we’re definitely moving in the right direction.”

Perhaps she’ll have more luck if Hillary is elected. Certainly, 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s position appears to be back in line with her position in the Senate and on the ’08 campaign trail. “Hillary Clinton has a record of expressing her own view that this was a genocide,” a Clinton aide told Newsweek. “She also has a record of promoting reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia and as secretary of state she personally worked to advance that goal.”

Kardashian’s representative did not respond to a request for comment.

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Asawin SuebsaengSenior Political Reporter

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