Kanye West has no qualms with running against President Trump, updating his plans and eyeing a 2020 candidacy, the rapper and entrepreneur told Forbes on Wednesday.
Mr. West said he was changing his plans to run this cycle instead of waiting until 2024. Part of the reason was that he lost faith in the president during recent protests against racial inequality outside of the park near the White House.
“It looks like one big mess to me,” he told Forbes. “I don’t like that I caught wind that he hid in the bunker.”
Mr. West, who is married to Kim Kardashian West, said he’s thinking about “Birthday Party” as his new campaign slogan.
“I am taking the red hat off with this interview,” Mr. West added, although the interview noted he wouldn’t “tamp down the idea that the Birthday Party is a ruse to help re-elect Trump.”
He said he’d run as a Republican if Mr. Trump wasn’t in the race.
Mr. West had harsher words for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden.
“I’m not saying Trump’s in my way, he may be a part of my way. And Joe Biden? Like come on man, please. You know? Obama’s special. Trump’s special. We say Kanye West is special. America needs special people that lead. Bill Clinton? Special. Joe Biden’s not special,” he said.
The rapper went on to argue that it’s a “form of racism and white supremacy and white control to say that all Black people need to be Democrat.”
There aren’t any official Federal Election Commission fillings yet, though, for his campaign.
Mr. West said he still has 30 days to decide whether he is going to run before he misses deadlines, but he’s looking at Michelle Tidball, a preacher from Wyoming, for his vice president pick. He said envisions his administration like Wakanda, the fictional country in Marvel’s movie “Black Panther.”
“I’m gonna use the framework of Wakanda right now because it’s the best explanation of what our design group is going to feel like in the White House,” he said. “That is a positive idea: You got Kanye West, one of the most powerful humans — I’m not saying the most because you got a lot of alien level superpowers and it’s only collectively that we can set it free. Let’s get back to Wakanda.”
