The hip-hop star’s wild, disjointed presentation offers both red meat and poison for right, left, and libertarian.
Kanye West, still running for president, spoke at his first campaign rally in North Charleston, South Carolina, Sunday afternoon.
West, with „2020“ carved along the back of his head and in a huge security vest, said a lot over his hour, some in reaction to audience questions or comments. But one major thread, predictable given his turn toward a 100 percent Christian message on his recent album Jesus Is King, was a robust Christian morality and an insistence that Jesus loves us all, and that spreading that message is more important to him than actually winning the presidency.
The general style and vibe of West’s speech was more revival meeting than political rally, with West noting he is „only afraid of God and in honor of God“ (while at the same time slyly noting that things he was saying might lose him business deals or even his marriage).
The emotional high point was a story about how his wife Kim Kardashian West had to convince him to give birth to their first child North, with West weeping out loud at the thought that he might have killed his own daughter. He similarly insisted that his own father wanted to abort him and he was saved only by his mother Donda’s resolve.
When it came to policy, though, candidate West insisted abortion should remain legal, and that a way to achieve the zero abortions he’d like to see might be to offer enormous amounts of money, even a million dollars, to women who feel pushed toward abortion by lack of resources.
Over the course of the rally, West made comments that could appeal to Americans across the ideological spectrum—and comments sure to make nearly every typically stratified American voter run away.
• For the conservative right: West sincerely repeated the gun rights slogan „guns don’t kill people, people kill people“ and stated how much fun it is to shoot guns. (He mentioned his ability to fire AR-15s all the livelong day if he wishes on his enormous Wyoming ranch.) He suggested that unilateral disarmament on either the personal or national level just places you at other people’s mercy. He said that Democrats have not done „shit“ for blacks, and that it is highly racist to insist that Kanye in the race will split the black vote and harm Biden.
While this particular sort of conservatism is too old-fashioned even for most modern American so-called „conservatives,“ West joined with his fellow earthshaking pop music genius turned hardcore Christian Bob Dylan in calling for a self-sufficient agricultural life as the best solution to most social and economic ills.
