Rapper Kanye West has received intense pushback from Hollywood since he first started his Twitter rants this summer about how black Americans should not feel pressured to continue voting for the Democratic Party en masse. West started to question why “unpopular questions” were being punished by a societal “thought police” and stood up for the free speech rights of black conservatives like Candace Owens. West’s Twitter rants helped spark the #walkaway movement, where black Americans started to publicly tell their stories to news media and on social media about why they felt the Democratic Party has not helped their community or given them good enough reasons to continue supporting them year after year in elections.
West recently went on Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show to defend his support for President Trump and talk about what made him speak out about how he felt silenced by his peers in the music industry. The rapper said, “Just as a musician, African-American guy out in Hollywood, all these different things, you know, everyone around me tried to pick my candidate for me… and then told me every time I said I liked Trump that I couldn’t say it out loud or my career would be over. I’d get kicked out of the black community because blacks – we’re supposed to have a monolithic thought, we can only, like, we can only be Democrats and all.”
But when West finally found the “confidence to stand up” and wear a MAGA hat, he faced vicious personal attacks from leftists in Hollywood and media who called him an “Uncle Tom” and said he was “championing” a “white freedom.” But West’s support for the President has led to positive outcomes as well. He used his platform and gave a voice to black Americans who, like him, have long felt their views did not align with their peers or with the Democratic Party.
West and his wife, celebrity Kim Kardashian, have met with the Trump administration on multiple occasions to discuss prison reform. Trump even commuted the sentence of Alice Johnson, a 63-year-old woman who was sentenced to life in prison over 22 years ago for a non-violent drug offense, after Kardashian met with him in person to plead her case. Since then, the West family has continued to defend the President publicly. After Kanye West’s Kimmel appearance, Trump thanked him in a tweet for being “willing to tell the TRUTH” and for his “support.” The president also touted the unemployment rate of African-Americans during his administration, which has continued to break historical records for its improvement.
This article was originally posted on Red Tea News.
