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By Douglas Perry | The Oregonian / OregonLive | Posted on 29 October 2018 at 08h10 | Updated 29 October 2018 at 09h28
Olivier Douliery / Abaca Press / TNS / AP
President Donald Trump may not be the least conventional figure in American politics.
Kanye West is definitely in the running.
The acclaimed rapper, married to reality TV star Kim Kardashian, enthusiastically supports Trump and Trump's "Make America Great Again" message.
Now he is encouraging African Americans to leave the Democratic Party, reports the New York Post. He designed "Blexit" – that is, "black out" – t-shirts proclaiming "We Free".
"Blexit" is, of course, a play on the term "Brexit", which refers to Britain's planned withdrawal from the European Union.
The "Blexit" effort, a move by Turning Point USA's director of communications, Candace Owens, is likely to be a tough battle. Eighty-four percent of African-American voters identify with or approach the Democratic Party, a poll from the Pew Research Center Center said in March. Only 8% of African-American voters were Republicans or Leaning Republicans.
West's T-shirts bowed over the weekend at the TPUSA's Black Leaders Summit in Washington, DC.
Owens recently stated on Breitbart.com that African Americans were beholden to a Democratic party that did not really care about them, that "blacks are supposed to think and act within the confines of what white liberals consider as acceptable ".
Over the weekend, she said West's t-shirts "would open a conversation we needed."
Earlier this month, West met Trump at the Oval Office, where, as USA Today describes, he did a strange "10-minute monologue".
The 41-year-old Grammy winner said wearing the iconic red "Make America Great Again" hat allowed him to "feel like Superman" and that he previously suffered from a "mentality of victim".
"Let's stop worrying about the future – all we have is today," he said. He added that "Trump is on the way to his hero".
Many African-American artists and commentators, pointing out that white supremacists across the country have embraced Trump, lamented the performance of West Oval Office.
Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg News
CNN's anchor, Don Lemon, compared this to "a minstrel show".
Rapper T.I has called it "the act of despair the most disgusting, the most shameful and the most embarrassing". He added, "We have just seen Mr. West's soul at auction, and if you listen carefully, you will hear the tears of our ancestors."
Conservative experts, on the other hand, praised West.
"Listen carefully to what he said," said Tucker Carlson, speaker at Fox News. "Dotted with jokes, they are flashes of truth, true information about the reality of the world rather than the way they tell us."
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