Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a special series of discussions about US politics and the Trump presidency, or as we journalists call it, the gift that keeps on giving.

I'm Freddie Gray. I'm deputy editor of the spectator. Today I'm joined by Liz Harrington from the Washington Free Beacon, and we're going to be asking

what on earth is Kanye West doing? So Liz, it's fair to say the internet has been writhing in the last few

days with Kanye West, who has tweeted at first, I think he tweeted his support for Candace Owens,

who is a people are calling her a black conservative.

And then he started to tweet about Trump a lot last night in particular.

And he's done this a bit before, but it seems to have intensified now.

And it's driving people crazy.

I thought I'd just ask you first.

What is he doing?

What's his game here, do you think?

I think he's trying to be provocative, but also doing something that, I mean, in a lot of ways,

he's a lot like Trump, right? He knows kind of how to market himself and steer the conversation.

And I also happen to think he believes some of this stuff. The whole thing seems so silly, right?

And dragon energy and all of this.

But the core things of what he's saying are actually really important.

And him saying, you know, you can have a right to independent thinking and independent thought.

And that's actually hugely important. And talk about being brave in Hollywood or in celebrity

or in the music industry. This is actually pretty brave because nobody says this. Nobody even hints that you support

Trump or, you know, say he's not the devil. I mean, look at what Shania Twain had to just

apologize for a hypothetical vote. She's Canadian. Or Roseanne. What happened with Roe? Can you

explain to us a bit what happened with Roseanne?

...