Talking points
Kanye: An Oval Office spectacle
Kanye West’s “rambling, incoherent, cry-for-help rant” in the Oval Office last week was painful to watch, said Charles Blow in The New York Times. President Trump supposedly invited his outspoken African-American admirer to discuss prison reform. Instead, surrounded by reporters and camera crews, West delivered a 10-minute, profanity-laced monologue, during which he praised Trump’s negotiations with North Korea; claimed he’d been misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder; and thanked Trump for exuding “male energy,” adding that the “Make America Great Again” hat West was wearing made him feel “like Superman.” Trump looked alternately dumbstruck and delighted as West pounded on the Resolute Desk while “stroking the president’s ego,” said Clay Cane in CNN .com. Trump cruelly used West—who has mental health issues—to cover up his racist disdain for black Americans. It was yet another “debasing” moment in this “circus-like White House.”
If liberals really thought West was irrelevant, said Michael Goodwin in NYPost.com, they wouldn’t be going “absolutely bonkers” over his support for Trump. The Left called the Oval Office meeting a “minstrel show” and “white supremacy by ventriloquism,” and condemned West as an Uncle Tom. “Whoa, Nellie. What nerve did he touch?” All it took to generate this “outpouring of wrath” was a black celebrity questioning African-American voters’ blind loyalty to Democrats. Under Trump and his booming economy, about 800,000 more AfricanAmericans have jobs now than they did when Trump took office. “With West in tow,” said Ed Rogers in WashingtonPost.com, “Trump could walk into the most impoverished neighborhoods” and ask young people, “Who do you think wants you to have a shot at getting rich, me or Bernie Sanders? Me or Elizabeth Warren?” It’s a no-brainer.
Republicans should not get carried away, said Kimberly Ross in WashingtonExaminer.com. They’re “greedy for celebrities they can call their own” after seeing so many pop artists and movie stars embrace Democrats. But Kanye “isn’t a conservative”; he’s an odd attention seeker with no coherent message. For Republicans to celebrate his donning of a MAGA hat feels a little...desperate. Most celebrities identify as liberal Democrats, and Republicans should downplay West’s embrace of Trump just as they disregarded Taylor Swift’s recent endorsement of Democrats in the midterm elections. Let the liberals “fawn over fame.”