He just tweeted up a storm praising Donald Trump, but Kanye West’s relationship with Trump versus with Barack Obama is somewhat confusing. Kanye’s flurry of recent Twitter activity came after the rapper told Hot 97 radio host Ebro Darden, “I do love Donald Trump.” Kanye also criticized Obama and defended the time he complimented Candace Owens, a conservative YouTuber who claims racism is a thing of the past.
As a result of the divisive opinions, many of Kanye’s fans became unhappy with him. For some, it seems baffling that the same Kanye who said “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” is the same man who’s now cheering for Trump, the man who called African nations “sh*thole countries.” But at what point exactly did Kanye join Team Trump? And what’s up with his supposed beef with Obama? Turns out, his history with the two politicians is not that straightforward.
Kanye told Darden he was disappointed with Obama because he had supposedly reached out to Obama for years and “couldn’t get anything done.” Trump, on the other hand, gave Kanye a meeting and the two were pictured together in Trump Tower in 2016. During the radio interview, Kanye also bemoaned the “thought police” trying to silence people’s opinions and praised Owens for “challenging conventional black thought.”
Kanye’s comments on Trump and Obama go further back, however, like way before he was sporting a “Make America Great Again” cap.
Back when Trump was only a reality TV star and real estate mogul, and not leading the United States of America, Kanye made references to him in his lyrics. See below exhibits A, B, and C.
In a 2005 freestyle on the YouTube channel Tim Westwood TV:
I ain’t no clown like Ronald
Uh, more like Donald
Trump, with the way I get it crunk
Then in a 2009 remix of “Flashing…
