Last week, George Bush and Kanye West took the first step toward burying the hatchet: openness. They aired their feelings about what Kanye said about the response to Hurricane Katrina (that Bush "doesn't care about black people"), with the ex-decider calling it a "disgusting" moment of his presidency. Kanye replied that "I definitely can understand the way he feels," comparing his Taylor Swift incident with George Bush's post-Katrina backlash.

On Wednesday the second—and much messier—step arrived: acceptance. In an interview with Matt Lauer, Bush was shown a clip of Kanye apologizing for his 2005 statement. "I didn't have the grounds to call him a racist," West conceded. Blinking at the clip, Bush took the admission in stride. "I appreciate that," he reckoned, before noting that it wasn't just West who derided him post-Katrina. "I'm not a hater, I didn't hate Kanye West...nobody wants to be called a racist," he concluded.

Unfortunately, before they could take reach step three, Kanye fired off a series of ranting tweets directed against Lauer. Back to the drawing board:

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Erik Hayden