Now Trump Has Dragged Chance the Rapper Into This Kanye Mess

By Isha Aran  |  April 27, 2018 | 3:20pm
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Wow, what a week! Kanye West went full MAGA on us, elicited an approving tweet from Donald Trump, said some weird shit about dragon energy, and illuminated who exactly would rather stan for a very talented and prolific producer and rapper versus who would rather keep their dignity.

Well today, our idiot white supremacist president tweeted about his new dragon brother Kanye again and was even nice enough to drag Chance the Rapper into this whole fiasco. Yes, that Chance, the famous Obama family friend, supporter of Hillary Clinton, and protector of Chicago public schools. Unfortunately, Chance brought this upon himself through a series of misguided tweets, but he has since responded, taken responsibility, and set the record straight.

First of all, it goes without saying that this tweet is absolutely outrageous. To describe West’s embrace of a man who demanded the Central Park Five be put to death as a service to black people is obviously fucked up!

Here’s how Chance comes into it. Over the past couple of days, he’s been defending West, giving him a pass for conflating his seeming embrace of white supremacists with practicing “free thinking.” Instead of questioning why West would show support for someone who has a long history of racism, Chance, who said he spoke to West days before all hell broke loose, decided to see West’s behavior as the “same Ye.”

Chance went on to make some other points in what seemed like an effort to justify West’s choices.

Black people clearly don’t have to be Democrats, but this is definitely a cop-out and a refusal to actually engage with what is happening.

Obviously Chance isn’t a Trump supporter. It’s clear that he was trying to support a friend and idol and “Ultralight Beam” co-passenger, but my god did he choose the wrong response.

On Friday, Chance acknowledged this very grave misstep, in a response he posted to Trump’s tweet.

In the apology, Chance admitted he didn’t speak up against Kanye because he “wanted to help my friend and cause I felt like I was being used to attack him,” adding, “Unfortunately, my attempt to support Kanye is being used to discredit my brothers and sisters in the movement and I can’t sit by and let that happen either.”

Who knows if Trump will even care—he got the tweet he wanted out of this whole debacle.

It just goes to show that 1) if one of your favorite, extremely iconic friends jumped off a bridge, you do not have to go in after them even if you just want to save them, and 2) a crucial part of Trumpism is to manipulate the language of compassion and understanding and exploit it for political gain.

 
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