Azealia Banks has apparently changed her mind about Donald Trump.
Last August, when Trump’s face graced the cover of Time, the perpetually outspoken rapper told him there was nothing “special” about appearing on a magazine that once named Adolf Hitler its man of the year:
But then, late last night, just minutes after she wished her 548,000 followers a happy Black History Month, Banks officially endorsed the Republican frontrunner:
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In the tweetstorm that followed, Banks explained that she believes Trump “is the only one who truly has the balls to bust up big business.” In her view, Hillary Clinton is “too tied in” with Wall Street and Bernie Sanders “has no clout” to win over Republican lawmakers.
As her followers began to protest the seemingly out-of-nowhere endorsement, Banks defended her choice by calling into question the two Democratic leaders’ dedication to the rights of minorities:
It is not clear whether Banks actually thinks Trump can succeed in making America “great again,” as he has been promising for close to nine months. But because the country is “full of shit,” she said, we may as well “put a piece of shit in the White House.”
“I have no hope for America,” she continued. “It is what it is. Capitalist, consumerist, racist land of make believe. [sic] Its inherently evil and must feed on others for it to survive. I didn’t create it. I’m not proud of it. But I am here… And it’s all I know.”
Finally, she came around to her main point: “In conclusion, I think Donald trump is evil like America is evil and in order for America to keep up with itself it needs him.” She later clarified that because all politicians are “inherently evil” she trusts the “one who is most transparent.”
It was perhaps not the endorsement Trump was hoping for on the day of the Iowa caucuses.
Of course, this is not the first time Banks has publicly expressed her problems with the country she calls home.
“I hate everything about this country,” she said in a much-discussed Playboy interview last May. “Like, I hate fat white Americans. All the people who are crunched into the middle of America, the real fat and meat of America, are these racist conservative white people who live on their farms. Those little teenage girls who work at Kmart and have a racist grandma—that’s really America.”
Her latest Twitter rant quickly transitioned away from Trump and toward an argument she has made in the past, calling for the country to pay reparations to the descendants of slaves. But does she really believe President Donald Trump is a logical step toward that goal?
Banks’s followers have spent much of the past 12 hours convincing her to #FeelTheBern, but so far she hasn’t budged. She highlighted Sanders’s “distasteful” response to a question about reparations, which was recently lambasted by Ta-Nehisi Coates, as a reason to vote against him. But as one Twitter user pointed out, “Bernie actually marched with MLK while Trump made his fortune creating ghettos.”
While it’s certainly possible that Azealia Banks believes President Trump will do more to help African-Americans than Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders would, there might be another reason for her well-timed endorsement. As the pinned tweet at the top of her feed reveals, Banks will be releasing her first new song in more than a year this Sunday.
