“Kanye. Elon. Trump.”
These three names hovered in the ether late last week. They had emanated, somewhat implausibly, from the Twitter account of the House Judiciary Committee GOP — but what they were supposed to mean remained somewhat cryptic. Until, suddenly, the code cracked before our eyes.
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Kanye West: rapper, record producer, apparent antisemite. Now legally named Ye, he was in the news for wearing a “White Lives Matter” shirt to his runway show at Paris Fashion Week, telling Tucker Carlson in an extended interview that he thought the garb was “funny.” Yet things really took off later — after the GOP tweet — when he complained on Instagram that another rapper who disapproved of him was being controlled by Jewish people.
Instagram didn’t like this, and it disabled his account. So he tried Twitter, just before bedtime: “I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” Oh.
Next comes Elon Musk, serial entrepreneur and richest man in the world. Lately, he has been attracting attention for his on-again-off-again agreement to purchase Twitter for $54.20 per share (a marijuana joke, by the way, ha ha) so that he can restore “free speech” to the social-media site. Plus, there’s those wacky suggestions about how Ukraine and Russia might miraculously resolve the ongoing war — mostly, it seems, by Ukraine giving up almost everything and Russia giving up almost nothing.
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Again, however, it wasn’t until after the GOP tweet that Musk and West became co-stars in the Defcon 3 drama. “Welcome back to Twitter, my friend!” Musk greeted West when the songwriter initially reappeared on the platform, only hours before he announced his intention to raise the national state of alert. Later: “Talked to ye today & expressed my concerns about his recent tweet, which I think he took to heart.” We’ll see!
And Donald Trump? Trump needs no introduction. Precisely what he was doing at the time — retrospectively praising insurrectionists, or crying out to “BRING BACK COLUMBUS DAY,” or declassifying documents through telepathy — doesn’t really matter because he is doing more or less those same things all the time. What matters is what he represents: the MAGA agenda of grievance blended with grandiosity, where owning the libs is the highest calling.
That’s where Ye’s T-shirt trolling fits in. It’s where Musk’s purported crusade against cancel culture, embodied in his “welcome back” to a man booted from peer platforms for an antisemitic conniption, is most at home.
This is what really cracks the code. How on earth could the House Judiciary Committee GOP, of all entities, have foreseen the confluence of events that would cast Kanye and Elon so neatly in the roles of MAGA avatars? Obviously it couldn’t have. But it didn’t have to.
Think of one of those tweets where someone seems to have correctly predicted the score of a far-off Super Bowl — but it turns out the person also posted hundreds or even thousands of other guesses of different outcomes, then deleted all but the ultimately correct one. Now think of the exact opposite: one guess, endless ways for it to be right.
West and Musk’s MAGA status doesn’t depend on their actions, their words or any other day-to-day occurrence — not anymore. The right-wing has already claimed them, thanks to Ye’s would-have-voted-for-Trump vow and Musk’s slow-burn flirtation with extreme online conservatism. The two could have tweeted memes about brainwashed wokeism instead; or quit all social media in a stand against cancel culture; or, let’s face it, said anything to Tucker Carlson. The House Judiciary tweet would have still eventually have made sense.
So instead of asking why the House Judiciary GOP tweeted those names, ask: Why not? Whichever aide is in charge of posting basically reached into the MAGA grab-bag and pulled these two guys out. Because once you’re in the bag, you’re never getting tossed out, no matter how many Jews you vow to go “death con 3” on or how many dictators you propose to appease. Better yet, with the die-hards, your sins will redound to your credit. After all, MAGA Republicanism has never been about substance, and it certainly hasn’t been about anything as highfalutin as values. Personality is the word.
West and Musk are nothing if not personalities. They are always making news, and nowadays whatever news they make tends to look a lot more MAGA than it used to. And it looks even more so when their names are on the lips of the House Judiciary Committee GOP, spoken in succession with no other words to accompany them, as if they were saints.
Kanye. Elon. Trump. They’re all part of each other’s stories, now.
These three names hovered in the ether late last week. They had emanated, somewhat implausibly, from the Twitter account of the House Judiciary Committee GOP — but what they were supposed to mean remained somewhat cryptic. Until, suddenly, the code cracked before our eyes.
Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates
Kanye West: rapper, record producer, apparent antisemite. Now legally named Ye, he was in the news for wearing a “White Lives Matter” shirt to his runway show at Paris Fashion Week, telling Tucker Carlson in an extended interview that he thought the garb was “funny.” Yet things really took off later — after the GOP tweet — when he complained on Instagram that another rapper who disapproved of him was being controlled by Jewish people.
Instagram didn’t like this, and it disabled his account. So he tried Twitter, just before bedtime: “I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” Oh.
Next comes Elon Musk, serial entrepreneur and richest man in the world. Lately, he has been attracting attention for his on-again-off-again agreement to purchase Twitter for $54.20 per share (a marijuana joke, by the way, ha ha) so that he can restore “free speech” to the social-media site. Plus, there’s those wacky suggestions about how Ukraine and Russia might miraculously resolve the ongoing war — mostly, it seems, by Ukraine giving up almost everything and Russia giving up almost nothing.
Follow Molly Roberts's opinionsFollow
Again, however, it wasn’t until after the GOP tweet that Musk and West became co-stars in the Defcon 3 drama. “Welcome back to Twitter, my friend!” Musk greeted West when the songwriter initially reappeared on the platform, only hours before he announced his intention to raise the national state of alert. Later: “Talked to ye today & expressed my concerns about his recent tweet, which I think he took to heart.” We’ll see!
And Donald Trump? Trump needs no introduction. Precisely what he was doing at the time — retrospectively praising insurrectionists, or crying out to “BRING BACK COLUMBUS DAY,” or declassifying documents through telepathy — doesn’t really matter because he is doing more or less those same things all the time. What matters is what he represents: the MAGA agenda of grievance blended with grandiosity, where owning the libs is the highest calling.
That’s where Ye’s T-shirt trolling fits in. It’s where Musk’s purported crusade against cancel culture, embodied in his “welcome back” to a man booted from peer platforms for an antisemitic conniption, is most at home.
This is what really cracks the code. How on earth could the House Judiciary Committee GOP, of all entities, have foreseen the confluence of events that would cast Kanye and Elon so neatly in the roles of MAGA avatars? Obviously it couldn’t have. But it didn’t have to.
Think of one of those tweets where someone seems to have correctly predicted the score of a far-off Super Bowl — but it turns out the person also posted hundreds or even thousands of other guesses of different outcomes, then deleted all but the ultimately correct one. Now think of the exact opposite: one guess, endless ways for it to be right.
West and Musk’s MAGA status doesn’t depend on their actions, their words or any other day-to-day occurrence — not anymore. The right-wing has already claimed them, thanks to Ye’s would-have-voted-for-Trump vow and Musk’s slow-burn flirtation with extreme online conservatism. The two could have tweeted memes about brainwashed wokeism instead; or quit all social media in a stand against cancel culture; or, let’s face it, said anything to Tucker Carlson. The House Judiciary tweet would have still eventually have made sense.
So instead of asking why the House Judiciary GOP tweeted those names, ask: Why not? Whichever aide is in charge of posting basically reached into the MAGA grab-bag and pulled these two guys out. Because once you’re in the bag, you’re never getting tossed out, no matter how many Jews you vow to go “death con 3” on or how many dictators you propose to appease. Better yet, with the die-hards, your sins will redound to your credit. After all, MAGA Republicanism has never been about substance, and it certainly hasn’t been about anything as highfalutin as values. Personality is the word.
West and Musk are nothing if not personalities. They are always making news, and nowadays whatever news they make tends to look a lot more MAGA than it used to. And it looks even more so when their names are on the lips of the House Judiciary Committee GOP, spoken in succession with no other words to accompany them, as if they were saints.
Kanye. Elon. Trump. They’re all part of each other’s stories, now.
