Picture it: Kanye West and Donald Trump walk into a skyscraper. That might sound like the set-up for a joke but it’s not; it actually happened.
The two made headlines Tuesday morning when West arrived at the Trump Tower in New York City for an unannounced meeting with the president-elect. Details of the brief meeting are still scant, but cameras caught a newly blond West, just a few weeks out of inpatient mental health treatment, stroll with an entourage into the lobby of Trump Tower then into an elevator. The two emerged some time later to be photographed.
Trump told the reporters assembled that West was "good man" and shared that the two have been "friends for a long time." West, with arms folded, declined questions. "I just want to take a picture right now," he said, smiling.
Later in the day, West tweeted a la Trevor Noah and Charlamagne that he wanted to sit down with Trump to open lines of communication.
“I wanted to meet with Trump today to discuss multicultural issues. These issues included bullying, supporting teachers, modernizing curriculums, and violence in Chicago,” he wrote. “I feel it is important to have a direct line of communication with our future President if we truly want change.”
The meeting between Trump and West may have caught us all off guard—particularly given other matters the president-elect should be focused on, like the ongoing attacks in Aleppo—but it shouldn’t. In fact, Trump and West have been buzzing around each other for quite some time.
In September, Trump praised West as “so great” during one of his rallies.
"You know what? I will never say bad about him, you know why? Because he loves Trump!" the then-candidate told the crowd.
Even with fortune, fame, popular merch, dye jobs, and trophy wives aside, Trump and West are peas in a pod— two painfully egotistical human beings in over their heads but propped up by white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy.
Of course, West took the budding bromance up a notch weeks after Trump won the presidential election when West admitted that, although he didn’t vote, he would have voted for Trump.
“That don’t mean that I don’t think that Black Lives Matter, that I don’t mean that I don’t think I believe in women’s rights...because that was the guy I would’ve voted for,” he explained.
It’s probably not worth it to speculate on what West and Trump discussed or on the basic existence of a friendship between the two—that information will likely be released in a series of late-night tweets from West, Trump, or both. What is interesting, however, is just how much West and Trump—men who seem so different on the surface—have in common.
Even with fortune, fame, popular merch, dye jobs, and trophy wives aside, Trump and West are peas in a pod— two painfully egotistical human beings in over their heads but propped up by white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy.
West may have tweeted “#2024,” suggesting that he’ll push back his plans to run for president in order to give Trump time to cook, but he should rethink waiting to enter the political fray. With our nation so seemingly committed to electing the worst of us, I can’t imagine a better pair of potential running mates in 2020.
