*Attorney Antonio Moore discusses Kanye West‘s visit to the White House. He gives a harsh critique of West sitting with President Donald Trump, Jim Brown and the media to discuss politics, incarceration, and Black America.
MR. WEST: So there’s theories that there’s infinite amounts of universe and there’s alternate universe. So it’s very important for me to get Hoover out, because in an alternate universe, I am him. And I have to go and get him free because he was doing positive inside of Chicago, just like how I’m moving back to Chicago and it’s not just about, you know, getting on stage and being an entertainer and having a monolithic voice that’s forced to be a specific party.
You know, people expect that if you’re black you have to be Democrat. I have a — I’ve had conversations that basically said that welfare is the reason why a lot of black people end up being Democrat. They say — you know, first of all, it’s a limited amount of jobs. So the fathers lose the jobs, and they say, “We’ll give you more money for having more kids in your home.” And then, we got rid of the mental health institutes in the ‘80s and the ‘90s, and the prison rates just shot up.
And now you have “Chiraq,” what people call “Chiraq” — which is actually — our murder rate is going down by 20 percent every year. I just talked to the superintendent; met with Michael Sacks; that’s Rahm’s right-hand man. So I think it’s the bravery that helps you beat this game called life.
You know, they tried to scare me to not wear this hat — my own friends. But this hat, it gives me — it gives me power, in a way. You know, my dad and my mom separated, so I didn’t have a lot of male energy in my home. And also, I’m married to a family that — (laughs) — you know, not a lot of male energy going on. It’s beautiful, though. But there’s times where, you know, there’s something about — you know, I love Hillary. I love everyone, right? But the campaign “I’m with her” just didn’t make me feel, as a guy, that didn’t get to see my dad all the time — like a guy that could play catch with his son. It was something about when I put this hat on, it made me feel like Superman. You made a Superman. That was my — that’s my favorite superhero. And you made a Superman cape.
For me, also as a guy that looks up to you, looks up to Ralph Lauren, looks up to American industry guys — non-political, no bullshit — put the beep on it, however you want to do it, five seconds delay — and just goes in and gets it done.
Right now, you gave me the heart to go to Adidas. Because at Adidas, when I went in, in 2015, we were a $14-billion company losing $2 billion a year. Now we have a $38-billion market cap. It’s called the “Yeezy effect.”
And I went to Casper. We had a meeting in Chicago. And I said, “You have to bring manufacturing onshore.” And not even shore; into the core. It’s not about the border; it’s the core of Adidas. And Chicago is the core of Middle America. And we have to make Middle America strong.
So I had the balls — because I have enough balls to put on this hat. I mean, this Adidas thing made be a billionaire. And I could have lost $200 million walking away from that deal. But even with that, I knew it was more important for me to take the chance of walking away from that deal than to have no fathers in Chicago with no homes. And when we do have prison reformation, for no — because it’s habilitation, not rehabilitation, because they didn’t have the abilities in the first place. We never had anyone that taught us. They didn’t teach us. Exactly — we had no one that “taught” us. Right?
So it’s more important than any specific deal — anything — that we bring jobs into America, and that we provide a transition with mental health and the Amer-I-Can education curriculum that Jim has worked on. Larry Hoover also has a curriculum that he’s worked on. We have Montessori curriculums that we worked on. WeWork has a beautiful curriculum. The Waldorf establishment has a curriculum. We have meditation. There’s a lot of things affecting our mental health that makes us do crazy things that puts us back into that trap door called the 13th Amendment.
I did say “abolish” with the hat on. Because why would you keep something around that’s a trap door? If you’re building a floor — the Constitution is the base of our industry, right? Of our country, of our company. Would you build a trap door that if you mess up and you — accidentally something happens, you fall and you end up next to the Unabomber? You end up — you got to remove all that trap door out of the relationship.
The four gentlemen that wrote the 13th Amendment — and I think the way the universe works, it’s perfect. We don’t have 13 floors, do we? You know, so the four — the four gentlemen that wrote the 13th Amendment didn’t look like the people they were amending. Also at that point, it was illegal for blacks to read — or African Americans to read. And so that meant if you actually read the Amendment, you would get locked up and turned into a slave.
Again — so what I think is, we don’t need sentences; we need pardons. We need to talk to people. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I was connected with a neuropsychologist that works with the athletes in the NBA and the NFL. And he looked at my brain — it’s equal on three parts. I’m going to go ahead drop some bombs for you — 98 percentile IQ test. I had a 75 percentile of all human beings, but it was counting eight numbers backwards, (inaudible), so I’m going to work on that one. The other ones, 98 percent — Tesla, Freud.
So he said that I actually wasn’t bipolar; I had sleep deprivation, which could cause dementia 10 to 20 years from now, where I wouldn’t even remember my son’s name. So all this power that I got, and I’m taking my son to the Sox game and all that, I wouldn’t be able to remember his name from a misdiagnosage.
And what we need is, we can empower the pharmaceuticals and make more money. That’s one thing — I’ve never stepped into a situation where I didn’t make people more money. So we can empower pharmaceuticals, we can empower our industries, we can empower our factories. We can bring not only Adidas onshore, we can bring — Foxconn has set up a factory in, I think, Minnesota.
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