Look who came to dinner.
President Donald Trump entertained former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for dinner at the White House Wednesday night along with musicians Kid Rock and Ted Nugent.
In a Facebook post Thursday morning, Palin thanked Trump for the invitation and shared photos of herself, Nugent, and Kid Rock around the desk in the Oval Office. Another photo shows Palin chatting with Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner. The trio also posed with a portrait of Hillary Clinton.
Palin, who rose to national prominence as Sen. John McCain's running mate in the 2008 election, was an early endorser of Trump in January of 2016. Her endorsement bolstered Trump's conservative credentials among Iowa primary voters just weeks before they headed to the polls and was seen as a knock against Sen. Ted Cruz, who many expected to earn her endorsement instead.
That Nugent was among those standing in the Oval Office shows a major twist of political fate. Merely two years earlier the outspokenly conservative musician, who performed before a 2016 Trump rally in Michigan, called President Barack Obama a "subhuman mongrel." Nugent later apologized, "not necessarily to the President – but on behalf of much better men than myself."
That was not the first of his anti-Obama rhetoric, though. In 2012, Nugent said that if Obama were to be re-elected "I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year."
The visit highlights a White House decision last week not to continue the Obama administration policy of releasing its visitor logs. The Trump White House cited privacy concerns as a key reason in the reversal.
