In a polarized country like the United States, the music popular – pop, rock, folk, jazz, country, rap – remains the last common language of Republicans and Democrats. The White House has therefore always been interested in its stars: Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Kanye West, Taylor Swift and others. Before the election of November 5thL’Express tells you, in eight episodes, the story of the unlikely couples formed by the beasts of the music scene and the presidential political animals. Very pop’n’pol duos!
EPISODE 1 – Kennedy and Sinatra: An epic bromance, a shattering breakup
EPISODE 2 – Elvis Presley and Richard Nixon: This crazy interview between the “King” and the president
EPISODE 3 – Jimmy Carter and Bob Dylan, friends for life: “Listening to his records…”
EPISODE 4 – The Surprising Story of the Song That Put Bill Clinton in the White House
EPISODE 5 – George W. Bush made a big casting mistake when he wanted to hire Sting
EPISODE 6 – Between Obama and Springsteen, the story of a friendship “born in the USA”
Between Donald Trump and Kanye West, it all started in bed, in the nude. It’s June 2016 and America is about to choose between the eccentric real estate magnate, who won the Republican primaries to everyone’s surprise, and Democrat Hillary Clinton. Kanye West, for his part, has been at the height of celebrity for fifteen years, between gold records (160 million albums sold), magazine covers with his partner Kim Kardashian and collaborations with the biggest fashion brands.
In the middle of the election campaign, the rapper released the video for Famous and causes a national scandal: for ten minutes, larger-than-life wax statues of American celebrities – Taylor Swift, Rihanna, George W. Bush, among others – appear naked in a bed next to the hip-hop star. Trump and his rebellious (fine) locks of hair are in on the act. With hundreds of millions of views in just a few days, the Republican candidate is relishing the controversy and the free publicity.
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“If I had voted, I would have voted for Donald Trump”
The taste for scandal brings together the Chicago rapper and the New York billionaire. Kanye West enjoyed stratospheric success in America in the 2000s thanks to his hits (Jesus Walks, Stronger, Heartless…) but also his political coups, such as in 2005 when he torpedoed the Republican government after Hurricane Katrina hit devastated New Orleans. “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,” thunders the rap star, who has become the voice of a neglected African-American community. The same year, he became one of the first musicians to denounce homophobia in the hip-hop world. He is also a regular donor to the Democratic Party. So, in 2016, if West doesn’t give any voting instructions for the presidential election, his fans imagine that his heart leans towards Hillary…
But, like all Americans, they are not at the end of their surprises. A few days after Trump’s victory, Kanye West confuses the issue. At one of his concerts, he autographs T-shirts by signing… Trump! Then, on stage in California, the rapper launches into a long tirade in front of a stunned audience: “If I had voted, I would have voted for Donald Trump.” And he doesn’t care about the boos from his fans: the rapper will soon become one of the only show business stars to rub shoulders with this radical president.
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American reality TV star Kim Kardashian and her famous partner, rapper Kanye West, on April 21, 2015 in New York
“He loves the spirit of contradiction”
For Trump, it’s a blessing. “Kanye West is not a conservative, but he loves the contrarian spirit, just like Donald Trump,” notes Jelani Cobb, a historian and dean of journalism at Columbia University. “Early on in Trump’s political rise, West saw him primarily as a symbol of masculinity, but also as a highly entertaining spectacle.” The two men share few political ideals but do share an irresistible attraction to money, models, fame and an irrepressible need to say whatever comes to mind.
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A month after his presidential victory, Trump is isolating himself in his Trump Tower in Manhattan with his small team. The billionaire is trying to cobble together a government while waiting to finally gain access to the White House. However, his positions during the election campaign have already cooled the establishment. So, when Kanye West arrives in the lobby on that December morning in 2016, the president-elect can’t help but smile broadly. “Trump was delighted to attract this iconic rapper from Chicago, the city where Barack Obama built himself politically,” continues Jelani Cobb. “Especially since West was taking up the traditional discourse of the right, which considers the mistakes of the Democratic Party as the main cause of the violence in Chicago.” Behind the scenes, Donald’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, worked to bring the artist closer, having attended his concerts for a long time.
What no one knew at the time—and what the photos of the meeting don’t reveal—is that Kanye West had just entered a downward spiral. His ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, revealed that the singer suffered from bipolar disorder and that when he went to Trump Tower, he had just come out of a stay in a psychiatric hospital. West, who now wanted to be called “Ye” (according to him, the most used word in the Bible), then stopped his treatment and had a series of uncontrolled outbursts.
It takes more than that to disturb the “king of scandals”, now installed in the White House. In October 2018, he invited Kanye West in the Oval Office, wearing a red MAGA cap (Make America Great Again). In front of an audience of astonished journalists, the singer improvises on dozens of subjects for long minutes: North Korea, alternative universes, fighter planes, his parents’ divorce, his bipolar disorder (due according to him solely to “a lack of sleep”). “It was something,” Trump concludes at the end of the guest’s monologue. The media, for their part, mainly remember the image of a star of the African-American community, which votes Democrat at more than 85%, alongside the Republican president. And, also, this sentence from West: “When I put on the Trump cap, I feel like Superman.”
But being the only celebrity to support the head of state is soon no longer enough for the rapper, whose evangelical Christian faith increasingly punctuates his life and his songs. Considering himself chosen by God, he is running for president. “I’m taking off my red MAGA hat,” West explained in July 2020, after criticizing Trump’s choices during the Covid-19 crisis – and comparing vaccines to “the mark of the devil”… This candidacy nevertheless delights the Republican president. Because Kanye West could nibble a few points away from Joe Biden in the African-American electorate, which could make the difference in key states.
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“Even if he was probably not aware of it, his campaign was set up and organized by consulting firms linked to the Republicans and by executives from the Republican Party, points out Jordan Libowitz, of the NGO Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, who has gone through his campaign documents. It was in reality aimed at the re-election of Donald Trump.” A candidate in 12 states, Kanye West’s erratic campaign only allowed him to obtain 66,000 votes at the national level, too few to influence the final result. Biden is elected president.
A descent into hell
Once the election was over, the rapper put his red MAGA cap back on, but his mental state worsened. Divorced from Kim Kardashian, isolated within American rap and cut off from part of his audience, Kanye West sank into conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism. In October 2022, he compared the right to abortion to the Holocaust, assured that abortion constituted “genocide and control of the black American population”, that the media “remains controlled by the Jews”, and proclaimed his admiration for Hitler and the Nazis.
Despite the huge scandal, the singer met up with the former president the following month for a dinner at Mar-a-Lago! It would be his last. According to Trump, Kanye West had invited himself to a table with neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes, who advocates for the army to “clean up” black neighborhoods and expel Jews from the United States. On the way out, the rapper posted a video criticizing the billionaire and announced his candidacy for the 2024 election. “Trump really didn’t like it when I asked him to be my vice president,” Kanye West said in surprise. Since then, the two men have kept their distance.
But this summer, Kanye West resurfaced in Moscow! By going to a friend’s birthday party on the banks of the Moskva River, he became the first American star to break the cultural embargo with Russia. For him, as for the ex-president, the scandal is indeed a “way of life”.
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