In a bizarre series of tweets this afternoon that felt like a mental breakdown, at least in my own brain, Kanye West demonstrated his abundant affection for President Donald Trump, a politician who ran on an anti-immigration platform and has defended white nationalists from the country’s highest office. The rapper wrote that Trump is “my brother,” explaining first that “the mob can’t make me not love him. We are both dragon energy.” In response, the 45th president of the United States quote-tweeted West with the comment: “Thank you Kanye, very cool!”
And since then everything has been a nightmare! Donald Trump Jr. took this as some kind of personal victory, posting lengthily on Instagram about “a cultural turning point,” and cheekily quote-tweeting a defense of West from his wife, reality star (and Hillary Clinton supporter) Kim Kardashian West with “#ImWithHer.” Ivanka Trump quote-tweeted West’s tweet about dragon brothers with “#truth.” West posted a photo of his Trump-autographed “Make America Great Again” hat, and added 30 fire emojis. In a following post he shared a selfie of himself wearing the hat, along with two music executives, Lucian Grainge and Lyor Cohen. And lest there be any doubt that West is “in the sunken place”—i.e., per Academy Award–winning film Get Out, hypnotized by the white man for profit—the rapper posted a photo of the cavernous interiors of his palatial home with “do this look like the sunken place.”
West has been on a Twitter tear recently, announcing collaborations, writing a self-help book “in real time,” and talking about firing his manager. And of course, West is perhaps best known for making very surprising, very public statements—whether that’s informing Taylor Swift that he was going to let her finish, but Beyoncé had the best video of all time; or explaining, while fund-raising for the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, that George W. Bush “doesn’t care about black people.” Maybe most saliently, West has floated the idea of running for president—as recently as this morning, he joked (?) that, when he becomes president, Air Force One ought to be renamed Yeezy Force One.
But this is different. At least in those past outbursts, Rude Kanye West was still Righteous Kanye West; he’s always been a narcissist, maybe even a megalomaniac, but his conscience had been in the right place. His music—his life, his persona, his art—has been comprehensible, until now, as a hybrid expression of both his obsessive faith in himself and his experience of oppression as a black man. This embrace of Donald Trump—Donald Trump, who called African countries “shitholes,” who called Mexicans “rapists,” whose nationalist policies have deported children, broken up families, and escalated racial violence across the country—defies comprehension as a creative act. Instead it’s an exercise in power dynamics, a multi-millionaire’s networking game. West is stating that he admires nothing more than power, no matter how it’s attained; with his talk of the presidency, he seems eager to imitate Trump’s own self-aggrandizement. As a result he is trading smug, bullying words with corrupt oligarchs. It’s repulsive because, although Twitter and the news cycle are a playground for celebrities seeking attention, Trump is not just another celebrity; he’s a real-life politician whose actions have real-life consequences.
A generous interpretation of Wednesday afternoon would conclude that West is trolling all of us, teasing how seriously we take politics in a world governed by a reality star. The man is brilliant, and he has a point. But these politics are not abstract, and as a result, this trolling isn’t abstract, either. Denying the harm of the Trump administration is to do harm. Kanye West is a rich man. I don’t know that I expected him to care about immigrant children being separated from their parents. But I did expect him to care enough to do us the very small service of not supporting the guy who campaigned on—and signed the executive orders to enact—that platform.
What’s really staggering about this is that West is not acting alone. His famous wife—and more importantly, his publicity guru of a mother-in-law, Kris Jenner—are explicitly and implicitly throwing their support behind West’s tweets, suggesting a broader sea change in Calabasas. I used to be cynical about the glitzy corporate left. (See also: Bono.) But I prefer it to this naked disregard for even the semblance of doing what’s right—this canny, superficial ploy to take up even more space by refusing to care. It feels as if the era of limousine liberalism is being replaced, at least in this circle, with limousine nihilism. Who cares about the posture of doing good, as long as the tinted windows roll all the way up?
