Get ready to run up your therapy bill, because (formerly?) beloved rap icon Kanye West—yes, the same one who bravely called out George W. Bush on national television in 2005—recently paid a visit to the White House, where he met with Donald Trump, supposedly to talk prison reform. In a bizarre rant that rivaled Trump’s most nonsensical diatribes, West talked a mile a minute about how his MAGA hat makes him feel “like Superman”; his bipolar disorder is a misdiagnosis and he’s really just sleep deprived; Trump should make Apple build an iPlane to replace Air Force One; and Trump is his “father figure.”
As Kanye evinced on his recent album, ye, he (like many powerful men) is preoccupied with what he sees as the ebbing away of male power as women demand equality with the #MeToo movement. Throughout his Oval Office speech, he repeatedly referenced his having the “balls” to wear the inflammatory red Trump hat, and lamented that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign made him feel like less of a man.
“I love Hillary, but the campaign ‘I’m with her’ didn’t make me feel—as a guy that didn’t get to see my dad all the time—like a guy that could play catch with his son,” West said.
