Kanye West defends support for Trump, says political decisions based on race is 'mental slavery'
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Kanye West defended his support for President Trump during his Sunday Service event on Saturday in Utah, arguing that it’s “mental slavery” to make political decisions based on race.
West stood before thousands of fans after performing his hit song “Jesus Walks” and began to pray and testify to the crowd about his religious journey, Billboard reports.
Video footage from the event showed the rapper getting political at one point, telling the crowd that it was the Republican Party, led by former President Abraham Lincoln, who freed enslaved Africans.
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"That's the Republican Party that freed the slaves," said West, who defended himself against critics who slammed him for coming out last year as a Trump supporter.
His choice of politics, he argued, is ”my right.”
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"And we got the right, right? We got a right to our opinions, right?" he said.
West went on to suggest that making a decision based on one’s race is a “form of slavery.”
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"You black, so you can't like Trump? I ain't never made a decision only based on my color,” West said. “That's a form of slavery, mental slavery."
West made similar comments during a now-infamous TMZ interview in which he argued that slavery was a “choice.”
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“When you hear about slavery for 400 years ... for 400 years? That sounds like a choice,” he said. “Like, you was there for 400 years and it’s all of y’all? It’s like we’re mentally in prison. I like the word ‘prison’ because slavery goes too direct to the idea of blacks,” he added.
“It’s like slavery, Holocaust. Holocaust, Jews. Slavery is blacks. So, prison is something that unites us as one race. Blacks and whites being one race. We’re the human race.”