Trump isn't MAGA enough for far-right activists who threaten to rally around Kanye West

On Monday, Rolling Stonereported that far-right figures are flocking to rapper Kanye West, also known by the mononym "Ye," as a potentially more authentic standard bearer of the MAGA movement than former President Donald Trump himself — or at the very least, as a person who could send a message to Trump to step up his game in supporting white nationalism.

"The prospect of the rapper campaigning against Trump from the right is bringing glee to the deplorables set," reported Tim Dickinson and Nikki McCann Ramirez. "They see Ye as — if not a viable candidate — a political force that could keep Trump from drifting away from the extremes as he prepares for electoral combat with Florida’s anti-woke governor, Ron DeSantis. In his own recap of his Mar-a-Lago meeting with Trump, for example, Ye claims he pressed Trump: 'Why, when you had the chance, did you not free the Jan. 6-ers?'"

"Politically, Ye appears to hit a sweet spot for extremists, combining America First politics, Christian nationalism, and naked discrimination against Jewish people," said the report. "Ye — in a video that made the rounds on Telegram over the weekend — paints himself as a reluctant political leader: 'I’m constantly looking to see if someone could do the job better than me. I just haven’t found anybody yet,' he said. He then criticized Trump for a lack of piety. 'Trump would be a great president, but he’s gotta put God first in everything he does. God first. Then America,' Ye said, adding a pregnant pause before continuing, pointedly: 'Then Israel.'"

Among the figures gravitating around Ye are Lauren Witzke, a Christian nationalist and QAnon supporter who was the GOP's Senate nominee in Delaware in 2020, and anti-Semitic social networking CEO Andrew Torba, who urged users of his platform Gab to put “all of our memetic energy for the 24 primaries to Ye if he announces a run.”

Ye lost most of his business partnerships in recent weeks after a series of anti-Semitic rants, including a threat on social media to "go death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE," and rhetoric pushing the Black Hebrew Israelite conspiracy theory, which states that Black Africans were the real "original tribes" of Israel and modern-day Jews are fraudulent imposters.

Despite all of this, Trump himself took a meeting with Ye earlier this month, in addition to Nick Fuentes, a neo-Nazi podcaster who has called for stripping Jews of power in the United States.