Kanye West is stirring up controversy—and letting his conservative flag fly—once again. The rapper, who just days ago praised Candace Owens, the communications director of Turning Point USA, has recently garnered a number of allies on the right: Alex Jones applauded the artist in a video published Monday, and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk also delighted in West’s support. Now, West, who tweeted and deleted some Trump praise back in 2017, has returned to Twitter and is once again using the platform to express his opinions about the president.
In a series of tweets posted Wednesday, West said that, while he doesn’t “agree 100%” with Trump, “the mob can’t make me not love him.” In the same tweetstorm, West also voiced support for Hillary Clinton, though his most eyebrow-raising tweets featured a signed MAGA hat.
West wore the hat, apparently the same one signed by Trump, in a selfie with Universal Music Group CEO Lucian Grainge and YouTube Head of Music Lyor Cohen.*
One of the men with his arm around West (probably Cohen, who is the center) appears to be giving the “OK” hand gesture in the photo, which is itself somewhat fraught with controversy: It has been compared to one of the hand gestures meaning “white power,” but the Anti-Defamation League has called that comparison a hoax, ruling that the familiar gesture is not a hate symbol.
West has been hospitalized for mental health issues in the past, leading several gossip outlets to speculate that these latest comments, as well as West’s decision to part ways with his longtime manager, are the result of mental health issues. Twitter commentators have also been referencing Jordan Peele’s Get Out in response to the controversy, saying that West is in his own “sunken place.”
West’s wife, Kim Kardashian, pushed back against those claims, stating that “Kanye will never run in the race of popular opinion and we know that and that’s why I love him and respect him.”
The Trumps, for their part, seem to be returning the “love” for the Kardashian-Wests:
Correction, April 25, 2018: Due to an editing error, this post originally misstated that Lyor Cohen is rumored to become Kanye West’s new manager. That rumor is from an outdated article.
