Kanye West’s behavior has been erratic, to say the least.
After unleashing a pro-Donald Trump post-election rant at one of his concerts (“I would have voted Trump—if I voted”), signing memorabilia with the name “Trump,” and reportedly assaulting an associate, the hip-hop legend checked in to the UCLA Medical Center for a psychological evaluation. West has apparently been suffering from “temporary psychosis due to sleep deprivation and dehydration,” and this week he emerged in public with a new blond hairdo (perhaps in honor of Trump’s election victory, or the Frank Ocean album Blond?).One of West’s first things on his to-do list was paying a visit to President-elect Trump at his ritzy Trump Tower in New York—a summit that The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah found particularly head-scratching.
“Yes, Donald Trump and Kanye had a little meeting today. And look at Kanye West’s hair. The guy was in Trump Tower less than an hour and Trump’s people gold-plated his head already? What are they doing! I mean, I guess it could have been worse. Kanye could have come out rocking the full Donald. I would have known he was completely gone,” said Noah.
“But the meeting must have gone well, because not long ago—and this is real—Kanye tweeted ‘#2024.’ Meaning now Kanye is not going to run against Trump in 2020, and that also means we may get to see Trump feature in the ‘Bound III’ music video,” joked Noah. “This is exciting!”
Indeed, West unleashed a series of tweets explaining his much-criticized Trump visit, writing: “I feel it is important to have a direct line of communication with our future President if we truly want change. I wanted to meet with Trump today to discuss multicultural issues. These issues included bullying, supporting teachers, modernizing curriculums, and violence in Chicago.”And then the kicker:
Trump’s spokesperson Hope Hicks claimed that it was West who’d requested the meeting, but Trump’s decision to honor it—while routinely refusing his daily intelligence briefings, not delivering a press conference since mid-summer, and delaying his announcement about his various business conflicts of interest—is puzzling. Perhaps the president-elect wished to deflect media coverage away from recent reports that the CIA concluded Russia hacked the Democratic and Republican campaigns in order to sway the election toward Trump, or widespread criticism of his pick for secretary of State, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who has close ties to Putin (and whose company has hundreds of billions of dollars in drilling deals that have been stifled by U.S. sanctions against Russia).
Noah added, “But for me, even better than those two meeting was the news coverage of it,” before throwing to a montage of news networks jumping from reports on Trump’s chaotic transition and the dire situation in the Middle East to Trump’s meeting with Kanye West.
“Oh, man! The media is the best,” said Noah. “It really makes you wonder how America ended up selecting a celebrity president when the media is so focused on the issues.”
