We always thought that 2020 would be a crazy year, yet few could predict how the second half would kick off. Enter Kanye West.
On July 4th, the Chicago rapper, producer, and entrepreneur declared he wants to add politician to his resume, saying on Twitter that he’s running for president in 2020. In an interview with Forbes, West said he’s no longer supporting President Trump. He’s taking off the red hat and replacing it with a birthday hat — running under the banner of “the Birthday Party.”
Despite the fact that West has declared he’s running for president, he might have a tough time competing with Trump and Joe Biden considering he hasn’t filed any paperwork required to run with the Federal Election Commission. But if he goes through with it, West will have gone from a “Late Registration” to possibly becoming an electoral “College Dropout.”
So, how did West get here?
After dropping a pair of highly successful albums in 2004 behind “The College Dropout” and 2005 with “Late Registration,” West made his debut on the political scene after Hurricane Katrina by saying, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
West would continue to be the subject of controversy when, in 2009, he interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards, prompting then-President Barack Obama to say, “He’s a jackass.”
West kept to himself on politics for the rest of Obama’s presidency, but was caught in a selfie with his wife, Kim Kardashian, and the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton.
Many might be surprised that West is choosing to run for president in 2020, yet at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards, he straight up told us, saying, “And yes, as you probably could have guessed by this moment, I have decided, in 2020, to run for president.”
However, after Donald Trump upset Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, West became one of the few icons in the Hip-Hop community to embrace him.
After Trump won, West met with the president-elect at Trump Tower to the dismay of many of his fans. However, 2018 was a banner year for Kanye, who, unprompted, defended Trump enthusiastically on Twitter and aligned himself with some prominent Trump acolytes like Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens. West even got a White House invite ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
So, what exactly is West’s policy platform?
Well, he’s pro-life, stating, “Planned Parenthoods have been place inside cities by white supremacists to do the Devil’s work.” He’s suspicious of vaccines, dubbing them “the mark of the beast.” And interestingly enough, he said he’s inspired to transform the White House to follow the organizational model of the fictional country, Wakanda, in Marvel’s “Black Panther.”
Now, whether or not you believe West is serious about his run for president, there’s certainly precedent for him to believe that he can run and win. After all, think of who’s in the White House right now.
