Ready for another article about tweets?
On Monday, professional wearer of hideous red hats Kanye West—who's now being used as a fundraising tool by the Trump campaign—once again shared screenshots of some recent text exchanges. This time, instead of equating fans with a manipulation tactic, West posted portions of a conversation he was apparently having with "SS." Presumably, "SS" is Steve Stoute.
Immediately, West's decision to give this particular part of the exchange a massive spotlight was bashed by fans and friends alike.
At best, all of that is quite misleading. In a subsequent tweet including additional screenshots of text messages, Charlamagne Tha God and "John" (presumably John Legend) criticized West's display of the pro-Republican talking points. Of course, the notion that solely Republicans "were the ones" to offer this kind of help is, as previously mentioned, quite misleading. As others have pointed out, our inherently flawed two-party system has undergone massive identity overhauls in the decades since the issues touted in Stoute's text. Though one could argue meticulously about whether both parties endured a full-on identity overhaul, there's no question that the Democrats and Republicans of today wouldn't have much in common with the Democrats and Republicans of yesteryear.
"To say that the Ku Klux Klan was started by the Democratic Party—it's not the Democratic party of today," writer J. Michael Martinez, who penned the book Carpetbaggers, Cavalry, and the Ku Klux Klan back in 2007, once told the Richmond Times-Dispatch when discussing another popular Republican talking point. "From the 1930s until today, you think of the Democratic Party being considered the party of the disenfranchised."
Charlamagne, understandably, also urged West to "fact check" his shit before tossing it out into the universe.
Wait, why is all this even happening? Oh yeah.
