Kanye West and Donald Trump had a Twitter love-in and everyone got very angry
"We are both dragon energy."
Kanye’s been pulling stunts for a long time now. Crashing Taylor’s acceptance speech at the 2009 VMAs, announcing he’s running for president, meeting up with president-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York. And now he’s doubling down on his support for the most controversial president in living memory with a string of deeply odd tweets, which is pissing a lot of people off.
“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 said.
And there were more…
Particularly offensive were the pics of him wearing his signed MAGA hat, which has been worn by racists, KKK members and Nazis, like at the deadly Charlottesville riots.
Read more: The definitive ranking of Kanye West: which Kanye is the best Kanye?
Trump, of course, loved the attention and quickly tweeted: “Thank you Kanye, very cool!”
Kind of embarrassing, though, when Kim had a go at him and he was forced to tweet this:
However, it turns out that claims Kanye lost millions of Twitter followers after posting the pro-Trump tweets aren’t true at all - he still has around 27 million followers.
Like Kim, everyone else was truly angry with Kanye.
Janelle Monáe, with typical erudition and clarity, said in an interview: “I believe in free-thinking but I don’t believe in free-thinking if it’s rooted in or at the expense at the oppressed. If you’re free-thinking is used as fuel by oppressors to continue to oppress black people, minorities I think it’s bullshit and it’s not okay.”
John Legend wrote a string of intelligent and well-informed informed tweets explaining why supporting Trump is, for him, not okay:
Here’s some more reaction to Kanye’s tweets…
This whole mess raises a few questions: is Kanye just trolling us? Is it a convenient way to keep his name buzzing as he tries to flog us more Yeezys? Is he ultimately desperate for attention? Or does he really believe what he’s saying?
Of course, Kanye’s allowed an opinion, but freedom of expression shouldn’t be completely unbounded and he can’t expect to be free of consequences if he continues to side with a right-wing, racist leader.
(Image: Getty and Pixabay)
