Rapper Kanye West said he no longer supports President Trump and also sounded off against the Democratic Party, in a wide-ranging interview discussing his political aspirations.
Speaking to Forbes magazine in an interview published Wednesday, the billionaire sneaker mogul, who announced his 2020 candidacy Saturday, said he was “taking the red hat off, with this interview,” and starting his own party for 2020, “the Birthday Party.”
If Trump wasn’t already the GOP candidate, West told the magazine he would run as a Republican, adding, “I will run as an independent if Trump is there.”
He said his third party will be called the Birthday Party, “Because when we win, it’s everybody’s birthday.”
He noted his top two advisers are his first supporters, wife Kim Kardashian and Elon Musk.
West, who admitted in the interview to never having voted before, did not provide specific reasons for his decision to stop supporting the president.
Instead, he said he had lost confidence in Trump, noting, “It looks like one big mess to me. I don’t like that I caught wind that he hid in the bunker.”
West went on to explain his original support for the president, saying that “Trump is the closest president we’ve had in years to allowing God to still be part of the conversation.”
Asked about the Democratic Party, West did not pull punches.
“That is a form of racism and white supremacy and white control to say that all Black people need to be Democrat and to assume that me running is me splitting the vote. All of that information is being charged up on social media platforms by Democrats. And Democrats used to tell me, the same Democrats have threatened me … The reason why this is the first day I registered to vote is because I was scared. I was told that if I voted on Trump my music career would be over. I was threatened into being in one party.
“I was threatened as a Black man into the Democratic Party. And that’s what the Democrats are doing, emotionally, to my people. Threatening them to the point where this white man can tell a Black man if you don’t vote for me, you’re not Black,” he said.
He added, “One of the main reasons I wore the red hat as a protest to the segregation of votes in the Black community.”
West has not taken any concrete steps to actually file to run for the presidency, including declaring his candidacy.
In October 2018, he delivered an F-bomb- and curse-filled rant during a meeting in the Oval Office — after which Trump said the MAGA hat-wearing rapper could one day fill his shoes as commander-in-chief.
Asked when he first decided to seek the presidency, the 43-year-old rapper said he was in the shower after being offered the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award, a lifetime achievement prize in music, at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards.
“I remember being at my mom’s house, my mother-in-law, because my house was being worked on, she calls me ‘son’ and I call her ‘Mom,’ I was in the shower thinking, I write raps in the shower. It hit me to say, ‘You’re going to run for president’ and I started laughing hysterically.
“I was like this is the best, I’m going to go out there and they’re going to think I’m going to do these songs and do this for entertainment, how rigged awards shows are, and then say I’m president. And I just laughed in the shower, I don’t know for how long, but that’s the moment it hit me,” West said.
While accepting his award, West said, “Two thousand and fifteen. I will die for the art, for what I believe in. The art ain’t always gonna be polite.”
West went on to say at the time, “I don’t know what I’m [going to] lose after this, it don’t matter though ’cause it ain’t about me. It’s about ideas, bro, new ideas. People with ideas. People who believe in truth. And yes, as you probably could have guessed by this moment, I have decided in 2020 to run for president.”
The superstar rapper told Forbes that God will decide how the two upcoming presidential races would be decided.
“Let’s see if the appointing is at 2020 or if it’s 2024 — because God appoints the president. If I win in 2020 then it was God’s appointment. If I win in 2024 then that was God’s appointment,” he said.
Back in his 2018 Oval Office meeting with the current commander-in-chief, West said in front of a gaggle of reporters that he would not run until 2024 to not compete with Trump.
“Could very well be,” Trump said at the time when asked if he thought West was presidential material.
“Let’s stop worrying about the future, all we have is today … Trump is on his hero’s journey right now. He might not have thought he’d have a crazy motherf–ker like me [in the White House],” he said at the meeting.
While West hasn’t formed a fully operational campaign just yet — nor is it clear that he plans to — he believes he can capitalize on being a political newcomer.
“I have to say with all humility that as a man, I don’t have all of the pieces in the puzzle. As I speak to you for what a political campaign — a political walk, as I told you, because I’m not running, I’m walking. I’m not running, we the people are walking. We’re not running anymore, we’re not running, we’re not excited — we are energized. Someone can say, ‘Hey, I got a brand new car for you, it’s across the street’ and you get so excited you run across the street and get hit by a car trying to run to your new car.
“That’s how they control the Black community, through emotions, they get us excited, we’re so excited, but then for 400 years the change doesn’t truly happen,” he told Forbes, remarking on his belief that he could enact change.
West again referenced God in discussing his decision to run in this election cycle.
“God just gave me the clarity and said it’s time. You know I was out there, ended up in the hospital, people were calling me crazy. I’m not crazy,” he said. “Between all of the influences and the positions that we can be put in as musicians — you go on tour, you put out all these albums, and you look up and you don’t have any money in your account. It can drive you crazy, through all of that I was looking crazy because it wasn’t the time. Now it’s time. And we’re not going crazy, we’re going Yeezy, it’s a whole ‘notha level now. N-O-T-H-A.”
Asked what his campaign slogan will be, he was quick to turn to his experience as an artist.
“Well my second album is called Late Registration. I got a rap … The other thing is, my campaign is Kanye West YES, not YEP, not YEAH. YES. YES. YES,” he said.