Kanye West makes his first presidential campaign appearance. Photo / AP
Kanye West makes his first presidential campaign appearance. Photo / AP
There are renewed concerns for Kanye West's mental health after the rapper's emotional and frequently bewildering performance during the first rally of his presidential campaign.
West broke down in tears at one point and briefly became unintelligible as he revealed he and his wife, Kim Kardashian-West, had considered terminating her first pregnancy.
But that was far from the only troubling moment.
Social media users were perplexed by West's criticism of Harriet Tubman. Photo / AP
Much of the reaction on social media today has focused on West's mental health, which both he and Kardashian-West have publicly addressed in the past. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2016.
Speaking to David Letterman for the former late night TV host's Netflix series last year, West described the effects of his "manic" periods.
"Everything's a conspiracy. You feel the government is putting chips in your head. You feel you're being recorded. You feel all these things," he said.
And in an interview with Vogue, Kardashian-West said the couple were in "a pretty good place" with West's mental health, but conceded he was refusing to take medication.
"For him, being on medication is not really an option, because it just changes who he is," Kardashian-West said.
This is upsetting. He isn’t well. He hasn’t been for some time. I just hope his inner circle has the courage to put his mental health above their own self-interests before it’s too late. https://t.co/rpPoqK9bFw
Kanye West blatantly needs a level of care and support that he isn’t currently getting from the people in his life. The man is open about his struggles with having bipolar disorder. But, every time he goes through a period of mania, it gets turned into a meme or joke.
People with mental health issues don’t always say the correct things all the time. It doesn’t mean they’re racist or misogynistic. Judging them on these standards of speech when they need help is cruel. We should really just encourage Kanye West to get some help with compassion.
A series of strange moments during today's campaign event baffled viewers.
West appeared in a flak jacket marked "security", with "2020" shaved into his purple hair.
He did not bring a microphone, and asked the crowd to "be quiet" so he could be heard.
"If you guys are going to whisper, go outside and talk. We need absolute silence, we need absolute order," West told members of the audience at one point.
"If you see someone next to you that nudges you and tries to talk to you, raise your hand and say, 'This person is distracting me from what they're trying to say,' and we will have them escorted out."
He promised that, moving forward, "we will be in rooms where the acoustics are excellent".
In perhaps the weirdest moment – though it had plenty of competition – West interrupted his own meandering monologue about economic inequality with a sudden attack on one of the most revered figures in US history, Harriet Tubman, for no apparent reason.
"Harriet Tubman never actually freed the slaves. She just had the slaves go and work for other white people," he claimed.
Tubman, an African-American woman who escaped her own enslavement, fought for the Union against the Confederacy during the American Civil War, and helped dozens of slaves escape north as a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad.
She was famously the first woman in American history to lead an armed military expedition when, in 1963, she guided soldiers up the Combahee River and freed 700 slaves.
Social media users were perplexed by West's criticism of her. Video footage filmed by one of the event's attendees, in which she reacted to the comment by saying, "We're leaving right now," has been retweeted more than 50,000 times.
Kanye said this and I left immediately. I went for a laugh and I got one. But when it got disrespectful for me it was over. pic.twitter.com/nNqjUp03mu
At another stage of the speech, West echoed President Donald Trump's famous line that he is a "very stable genius" by hyping up his own intelligence. "I understand everyone is excited. You have someone who is not afraid of anyone, and is only afraid of God. And that is a 132 IQ genius who went to the hospital because his brain was too big for his skull," West said.
The crowd was audibly confused when he shared an anecdote about a trip he took to the doctor in 2018.
"OK, so, I stubbed my toe two years ago. And went to the doctor," West said.
"When I got there, five doctors asked me if I wanted pain medication. At the end of the year, they give out awards for the people who have given out the most medication."
"What?" a particularly loud voice in the audience asked.
A few minutes later, West said "the most racist thing that's ever been said out loud" was the idea that his presidential run could split the African-American vote and help Mr Trump win re-election.
He went on to speak for more than 20 minutes about his opposition to abortion.
"In the Bible it says thou shalt not kill," West said.
"I remember that my girlfriend called me screaming and crying. And I'm just thinking – and at that time I was a rapper, I was out there, I had different girlfriends and everything. And I was like, I want to word this in a way that – hey I don't give a f***.
"So my girlfriend called me and I just thought to myself, 'Please don't tell me I gave Kim Kardashian AIDS."
Some people in the crowd laughed at the joke. Others groaned.
"Then she said, 'I'm pregnant.' I said, 'Yes!' Then I said, 'No.' I gotta tell you what was in my mind. She was crying," West continued.
"She said she was pregnant, and for one month, and two months, and three months, we talked about her not having this child. She had the pills in her hand. When you take the pills, and if you take it, the baby's gone.
"I was sitting up in Paris, and I had my leather pants on. I'm in the apartment where my wife was actually robbed, and I had my laptop up, and I got all my creative ideas – I got my shoes, I got my next album cover, I got all this – and the screen went black and white. And God said, 'If you f*** with my vision, I'm going to f*** with yours.'
West makes his first presidential campaign appearance since declaring himself a candidate. Photo / AP
"And I called my wife and she said, 'We're gonna have this baby.' I said, 'We're gonna have this child. I know people that are 50 years old that didn't have children, that have never been able to experience the level of joy that I experienced having a child.
"So even if my wife were to divorce me after this speech, she brought North into the world, even when I didn't want to. She stood up and she protected that child.
"You know who else protected a child? Who do you think might have protected a child? My mum saved my life. My dad wanted to abort me. My mum saved my life. There would have been no Kanye West, because my dad was too busy!"
At that point West started to cry, and it became difficult to discern much of what he was saying.
"I almost killed my daughter! I almost killed my daughter!" he shouted.
"We love you Kanye!" some members of the crowd shouted back.
That was followed by a string of mostly unintelligible sentences.
"They're going to run this, they're going to try to tell you that I'm crazy. The world's crazy," West said.
Eventually West reached his point, saying abortion should "always be legal", but there "should be an option of maximum support".
His idea, which he called a "maximum increase", was to give every woman the option of taking a large payment from the federal government to help her raise her child.
He mentioned the policy a couple of times – the first time, the proposed payment was $50,000, and after that it became a million dollars.
"Everybody that has a baby gets a million dollars, or something like that," he said.
The end of the rally came as abruptly as West's attack on Tubman.
"That was extremely good. That was extremely bad. I'm out," he said, before walking off.
