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By the time you finish this article, we guarantee you Kanye West will have tweeted at least 25 more times. Kanye, you make covering trending news really hard.
Kanye West seems to have a bit of a crush on President Trump and millions of his fans are, understandably, a little confused. Shortly after Trump’s electoral college victory in November, Kanye visited the president-elect at Trump Tower, but the purpose of this meeting was unclear. A Twitter stream on Wednesday, April 25, however, left no doubt as to how Kanye feels about the commander-in-chief.
He tweeted: “You don’t have to agree with trump but the mob can’t make me not love him. We are both dragon energy. He is my brother. I love everyone. I don’t agree with everything anyone does. That’s what makes us individuals. And we have the right to independent thought.” He also tweeted out this photo of him wearing a Make America Great Again hat alongside music executives Lyor Cohen and Lucian Grainge.
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Buzzfeed editor Tom Gara pointed out that it appears as if Lyor Cohen is flashing the “OK” symbol. That symbol used to just mean “everything’s okay,” but in recent years has taken on new meaning after 4chan convinced people, briefly in 2017, that it could also be used as a white power symbol. This supposedly inspired some Trump supporters to actually use the gesture, partially to make fun of the snowflake liberals who believed the 4chan hoax.
Kim Kardashian West must have seen that Kanye’s tweets were upsetting some people, because he tweeted: “my wife just called me and she wanted me to make this clear to everyone. I don’t agree with everything Trump does. I don’t agree 100% with anyone but myself.” But Kim defended her husband from accusations that he’s backed down from his previous values. She wrote: “He’s a free thinker, is that not allowed in America? Because some of his ideas differ from yours you have to throw in the mental health card? That’s just not fair. He’s actually out of the sunken place when he’s being himself which is very expressive.”
Both Kim and Kanye have in recent days referred to “the sunken place,” not as a symbol of being marginalized by an oppressive racial system as in Jordan Peele’s Get Out, but as, apparently, Kanye’s own state of depression. Though, according to some rapidly spreading memes, maybe Kanye’s Trump love means he really is trapped in the Sunken Place.
Kanye’s outpouring didn’t go unnoticed by anyone. President Trump himself retweeted Kanye’s endorsement and wrote: “Thank you, Kanye! Very cool!”
Okay, so why is Kanye fawning over Trump such a big deal? Probably because it’s so divergent from everything he used to talk about before 2016. In fact, much of mainstream America’s first introduction to Kanye was his off-script plea for racial justice on a Hurricane Katrina benefit show in 2005. And, he singled out the Republican Party for only addressing the issues of white Americans in the song “New Day” from album, ‘Watch The Throne’. So, his support of Trump, a president who was unable or unwilling to disavow a white supremacist march in Charlottesville, VA, who characterized African-Americans as unemployed and impoverished individuals with nothing to lose who are inherently lazy, and who demanded the death penalty for the Central Park Five, arguing that they were guilty a decade after being exonerated by DNA evidence — well, it all makes you wonder what he’s thinking.
Now, there’s been evidence for awhile that Kanye’s thinking on race has evolved. Shortly after the election, at a show in San Jose, Kanye encouraged black people in the audience to not focus so much on racism in their activism. He clarified that he still supports Black Lives Matter, gay rights and women’s rights, but that he thought Trump’s victory would encourage racist white people to be more openly racist — and that this exposure is a good thing.
So, if anything, Kanye’s love for Trump seems more about his individuality and willingness to say any crazy idea that pops into his head — and less about any specific political agenda. I mean, he tweeted that he also loves Hillary, and regardless, he didn’t vote in 2016 anyway!
What do you guys think? Is it a big deal that Kanye is a Trump supporter? Are you still excited for his new albums in June? Let us know in the comments.
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