May 09, 2018

Kanye West

Kanye West

Source: Bigstock

Part of Trump’s success in avoiding the consequences of media scandal is that he makes all political problems personal (a reversal of “the personal is political” to “the political is personal”). With Trump, everything negative becomes a sort of celebrity feud, a rap beef.

So you can see the appeal this would have to rappers such as Kanye West. Trump is the most admired white man in hip-hop next to another flamboyant blond with plenty of swagger—the wrestler Ric Flair.

But take it all with a grain of salt: Kanye has been hitting gyms in the San Fernando Valley since late 2016. His changing physical shape, and seemingly larger head, could indicate that he’s now on steroids. Kanye’s “dragon energy” meltdown is reminiscent of Charlie Sheen’s 2011 “tiger blood” Twitter meltdown in form but perhaps in causation as well. Who in Kanye’s family might have introduced him to steroids, or have any experience on their effects on the human brain? Your guess is as good as mine.

Steroids, as it’s been pointed out, are the only drug that makes you more, not less, sympathetic to Republican politics.

But there are signs Kanye’s support for Trump represents a bubbling up of black support that’s been ready to emerge for a while, with black male approval allegedly doubling in the past week. Perhaps Kanye’s secret support for at least some of Trump’s policies represents a silent but sizable segment of black opinion. Any way to get black Americans off the Democratic Party’s wagon, if not a way to get them to turn their blue votes red, has long been a holy grail for the Republican Party.

To quote Thomas Sowell, someone Kanye had been tweeting in the past week: “If Republicans could get 20 percent of black votes, the Democrats would be ruined.”


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