Kanye West, Republican
When Kanye West made his heel turn and became a Donald Trump supporter, I tried to convince myself that the move wasn’t as alarming, dramatic or permanent as it might initially seem. I told myself, first and foremost, that Kanye’s embrace of Trump was the regrettable product of a manic episode, something I know an awful lot about, having been diagnosed as bipolar myself during a period of intense personal, professional and psychological pressure.
Beyond that, I told myself that Kanye, being a pop artist obsessed with style and fashion and ego, gravitated to Trump not because of his actual policies but rather because of his personality, his swagger, his larger than life image as the ultimate political iconoclast and rebel. I thought that if Kanye actually understood who Trump really was as a person and a politician he would recoil in horror and revulsion, the way all decent folks do.
Hell, I even wrote a little-read novella (Kanye & Trump) that depicted Kanye’s obsession with Trump as a sort of spiritual fever that swept through his body and soul and burned itself out quickly.
As someone who considered Kanye one of his favorite rappers, producers and rapper-producers for close to a decade, I wanted desperately to believe that the crazed narcissist was not complete lost, that he would find his way back eventually and realize just how grotesquely misguided he’d been.
Besides, it’s not as if Trump is a complicated, multi-dimensional figure. You don’t need to be savvy and politically aware to realize that Trump is an abomination: it’s transparent and self-evident. Trump is cartoonish and grotesque in his monstrousness, a hate-powered ghoul who embodies the very worst about our country in unusually concentrated form.
Yet somehow Kanye looked at this horrible man and saw something not just worthwhile and admirable but heroic. Or maybe Kanye just looked at Trump and saw himself.
I told myself that Kanye was a Trump guy mesmerized by the former reality show’s gaudy shtick, not a traditional Republican, as if that somehow made it better, even if Kanye used the extraordinary power he had accrued over the course of decades at the very top of his field to signal-boost the career of Candace Owens.
Throughout his years in the wilderness I hoped that Kanye would eventually see the light. So you might imagine that I would feel happy and vindicated when Kanye West recently announced, with his signature feverish melodrama and theatricality, that he was taking off the red hat so that he could run for president himself.
You would be wrong, of course. Kanye somehow managed to leave the Trump cult in a manner that rendered him infinitely more irritating and tragic a figure.
That’s because Kanye found a way to technically leave the Republican Party and stop supporting Trump that feels EXACTLY like staying in the Republican Party and continuing to support Donald Trump.
Veteran Republican operatives are “helping” Kanye get on the ballot. Not only has Kanye not denied that he’s running a spoiler campaign to hurt Joe Biden and help Donald Trump; he’s flat out admitted it.
Kanye’s “campaign” has officially become a shitty subplot in a bad, dystopian Bret Easton Ellis novel though I honestly have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea of anybody voting for Kanye as anything other than a pointless, nihilistic prank, a bad joke with no punchline.
Thank you Kanye, very cool indeed..
With his typical unwise candor, Kanye has conceded that if it were not for Trump, he would run as a Republican, as his platform, such as it is, is fundamentally Conservative: he’s a devout Christian anti-vaxxer who thinks a COVID-19 vaccine would be a way of transmitting the mark of the beast onto Christians and thinks Planned Parenthood is an organization fueled by white supremacy that is doing “the devil’s work.”
Kanye has similarly bragged about his close relationship with Jared Kushner and recently boasted that he would be meeting with Betsy DeVos to discuss the post-COVID 19 classroom.
I don’t think Republicans are inherently evil but it boggles the mind that Kanye West, a man whose music once dealt empathetically and incisively with issues of class, race, ego and self-esteem looks at the 2020 Republican Party of Mitch McConnell, Tucker Carlson and Lindsey Graham and sees something that reflects who he is as a person and how he feels the world should be run.
I can easily see Kanye getting star-struck meeting the likes of Donald Trump Jr. or Ted Cruz. Sad. Shame.
Kanye once collaborated with Jay-Z and the greatest rappers of our time. Now he brags about kicking it with Betsy fucking DeVos.
Kanye’s “presidential run” has to be a scam because Donald Trump has not said anything negative about it. On the contrary, he’s said “I like him” and “We get along very well” whereas if Trump felt that Kanye posed any danger to his re-election he would attack him in unhinged, deeply personal, undoubtedly racist ways, taking aim at his intelligence (a go-to insult for Trump when it comes to black celebrities, particularly women) and his sanity.
Yes, Kanye is a Republican these days and I am officially done with him.
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