To the dismay of everyone, Kanye West is back at it again. West went on pro-Trump rant after his SNL performance while wearing a MAGA hat.
Kanye West went on a political rant expressing his support for Donald Trump during his SNL musical performance Saturday night and was even donning the Make America Great Again hat by the end of the show. Just a few weeks shy of apologizing for stating his controversial “Slavery was a choice” comment, West is back on the MAGA bandwagon preaching about his love for Trump and everything he stands for.
During Kanye’s first musical performance alongside Lil Pump, West wore a Perrier bottle costume while Pump was dressed as a Fiji bottle. However corny the outfits may have seemed to viewers, the quirky waterbottle performance was a highlight compared to West’s rant, which was the lowest point of the night. West came out wearing his MAGA hat for his performance of “Ghost town”, alongside Kid Cudi and 070 Shake. And while the end credits rolled and the cast came back on stage, he went into a rant about Trump.
West had supported Trump since before he was inaugurated into office and has had a troubled relationship with his loyalty to the MAGA campaign. Mostly, he is troubled by the backlash he gets from fans. Weeks after Trump became the 45th president, West deleted all of his tweets supporting him supposedly because of the travel ban. But last year, he went on a Twitter rant expressing his love for Trump and further explaining that he doesn’t like everything that Trump does and advocates for but respects him and some of his policies nonetheless.
This led to the infamous interview with Charlamagne Tha God, in which West said that “Slavery was a choice”, a blasphemous commentary that takes away from 400 years of tortured and murdered African Americans who were captive against their will and a blatant disrespect to their ancestors that still struggle with the repercussions of the antebellum period. West also added to his reason for liking Trump, during his interview with Charlamagne, by saying he relates to him because they are both celebrities that are outcasts.
Watch Kanye’s rant after the SNL show from Chris Rock’s Instagram story:
Here’s the problem that Kanye still doesn’t under understand, Trump and the MAGA campaign are representative of ideas that hinder and hurt people of color and in particular African Americans. He can try to paint the bright colors of the rainbow to explain why Trump should be appealing, but no one is going to look past that his campaign discounts the struggles of people of color and holds neo-Nazis and KKK amongst its members.
Variety reported that witnesses stated after the SNL performance went off camera, West was confrontational in his support for Trump and chastised that he needs a “dialogue, not a diatribe.”
According to Variety eyewitnesses, Kanye said:
"So many times I talk to a white person and [they] say, ‘How could you like Trump, he’s racist?’ Well, if I was concerned about racism, I would’ve moved out of America a long time ago."
He later added while jumping through topics like hoops:
"You wanna see the sunken place? Okay, Im’a listen to y’all now. I’ma put my Superman cape on because this means you can’t tell me what to do… You want the world to move forward? Try love."
The entire studio fell silent during the rant and West exited the stage singing his song “Try Love,” and stating that he knows they don’t agree.
But the apparent standoffish nature of those that West encounters isn’t about a lack of love. It’s about not wanting to support people that have a lack of care for immigrants, African Americans, and other people of color who live in the United States. West has long chided non-Trump believers for not coming together in the name of love without acknowledging that the disregard for the cries of police brutality and racial injustice have all but confirmed that coming together would be a one-sided conversation.
Furthermore, getting hysterical about no one supporting his belief is not the path to follow when trying to unite or educate. Before West can have the dialogue he so desperately seeks, he has to evaluate how precisely this political force he supports helps the people of color of this country, especially since so many have been fans.