The New Yorker:

“Because, in an alternate universe, I am him,” Kanye West said on Thursday afternoon, as he held court before a throng of reporters and photographers in the West Wing. President Trump and Jared Kushner had invited him to the White House for lunch. A MAGA hat, that red billboard of fascist fast fashion, sat on his head. With the word “him,” West could have been referring to Trump, whom he had greeted with a bear hug, and whom he gazed at now with pure admiration leaking from his frighteningly wide eyes. In fact, he was referring to Larry Hoover, the Chicago gang kingpin, who is currently serving six life sentences in prison for crimes including murder. West had come to Washington, D.C., ostensibly, to have a frank talk about “Chicago violence,” and to advocate for clemency for Hoover, whom he argued was being unjustly made to pay for his ability to organize the black man’s power.

West’s ten-minute monologue darted chaotically from allusions to Sigmund Freud and Nikola Tesla to claims that he had been misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder. But one theme he kept returning to, during the tirade and in response to journalists’ questions, was that of the disempowered black man, revived and ready to vanquish the enervating effects of women’s influence. He talked about not having “a lot of male energy” in his childhood home or in his adult one, and feeling that Hillary Clinton’s “I’m With Her” campaign alienated him “as a guy who didn’t get to see my dad all the time.” West said, positively gleaming, that he loved the MAGA hat because it made him feel like Superman. “You made a Superman cape for me,” he said to Trump, who sat across from him, looking stunned yet satisfied.

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