Donald Trump on Aretha Franklin: ‘She Worked for Me’

President Donald Trump found an interesting way to pay tribute to late singer Aretha Franklin on Thursday.

Trump was about to attend a Cabinet meeting when he took time to honor the “Queen of Soul,” who died from pancreatic cancer in Detroit on Thursday. 

“I begin today by expressing the condolences to the family of a person I knew well,” Trump said, “She’s worked for me on numerous occasions, she was terrific–Aretha Franklin–on her passing.”

Many were confused by what Trump meant when he said Franklin worked for him, but according to The Independent, the president may have been referring to when she performed at one of his Atlantic City casinos in the 1980s and when she attended the Trump Tower grand opening in 1997.

On Thursday, he tweeted about Franklin’s death, calling her a “wonderful gift from God.”

The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, is dead. She was a great woman, with a wonderful gift from God, her voice. She will be missed!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 16, 2018

Franklin received heartwarming condolences from former President Barack Obama.

“Aretha helped define the American experience. In her voice, we could feel our history, all of it and in every shade—our power and our pain, our darkness and our light, our quest for redemption and our hard-won respect. May the Queen of Soul rest in eternal peace,” Obama wrote.

Aretha helped define the American experience. In her voice, we could feel our history, all of it and in every shade—our power and our pain, our darkness and our light, our quest for redemption and our hard-won respect. May the Queen of Soul rest in eternal peace. pic.twitter.com/bfASqKlLc5

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 16, 2018