Kanye West and Elon Musk
Via Kanye's Twitter

Kanye West says he's "taking the red hat off" & talks presidential bid, vaccines, pro-life, police brutality & more

UPDATE: Planned Parenthood responds after Kanye says they’ve been “placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the Devil’s work.”

Kanye West made headlines when he announced a few days ago that he’d be running for president, with Elon Musk‘s full support. It’s hard to know how seriously to take him; as Business Insider points out, it’s already too late for Kanye to be officially listed as an Independent candidate in North Carolina, Texas, New Mexico, or Indiana, and deadlines to be listed in nine other states are coming up this month. Then there’s registration with the Federal Election Commission, which all candidates are required to do, and public records show Kanye hasn’t. Regardless, Kanye spoke about his presidential aspirations, and a whole lot more, in a new interview with Forbes.

One of the biggest revelations from the interview is that Kanye is no longer on team Trump. “I am taking the red hat off, with this interview,” he tells Forbes. He continued, “One of the main reasons I wore the red hat as a protest to the segregation of votes in the Black community. Also, other than the fact that I like Trump hotels and the saxophones in the lobby.” On his previous support for the president, he says, “Trump is the closest president we’ve had in years to allowing God to still be part of the conversation.”

Kanye also fleshed out his plans for running for president a bit to Forbes, saying that he planned to run under the banner of “The Birthday Party,” “because when we win, it’s everybody’s birthday.” He continues, “Like anything I’ve ever done in my life, I’m doing to win.” He says he’s picked Michelle Tidball, a preacher from Wyoming who describes herself as a “biblical life coach,” as his running mate, and his campaign slogan is “YES!”

Kanye also told Forbes that he contracted COVID-19 in February, saying, “Chills, shaking in the bed, taking hot showers, looking at videos telling me what I’m supposed to do to get over it. I remember someone had told me Drake had the coronavirus and my response was Drake can’t be sicker than me!”

Even after that experience, he remains staunchly anti-vaccine, though. “It’s so many of our children that are being vaccinated and paralyzed…So when they say the way we’re going to fix Covid is with a vaccine, I’m extremely cautious,” he told Forbes. “That’s the mark of the beast. They want to put chips inside of us, they want to do all kinds of things, to make it where we can’t cross the gates of heaven. I’m sorry when I say they, the humans that have the Devil inside them. And the sad thing is that, the saddest thing is that we all won’t make it to heaven, that there’ll be some of us that do not make it.”

Kanye harbors many other right wing views too, including being pro-life (“I am pro-life because I’m following the word of the bible,” he told Forbes) and in favor of prayer in schools. “Reinstate in God’s state, in God’s country, the fear and love of God in all schools and organizations and you chill the fear and love of everything else, so that was a plan by the Devil to have our kids committing suicide at an all-time high by removing God to have murders in Chicago at an all-time high because the human beings working for the Devil removed God and prayer from the schools,” he told Forbes. “That means more drugs, more murders, more suicide.”

He’s also committed to ending police bruality, saying, “One of my to-do lists is to end police brutality. The police are people too. To end laws that don’t make sense. Like, in the George Floyd case, there was a Black guy that went to jail and it was his first day on the force. So if it’s your first day on the force and it’s your training day, and this OG accredited cop with 18 violations already starts filing out, are you going to jump in front of that person and lose your job that same day? Especially in this climate when 40,000 people lost their jobs? This man was put in a position where—and also he probably didn’t realize that the cop was going to take it that far, he probably was so scared, in shock, paralyzed, like so many Black people. I’m one of the few Black people that would speak openly like this.”

The whole interview is a wild ride, and you can read it in full on Forbes.

Meanwhile, Kanye’s clothing and sneaker brand Yeezy reportedly received a PPP loan worth between $2 million and $5 million. Payroll Protection Program loans, which are forgivable if they are used under certain guidelines, are intended for small businesses and non profits. Kanye’s current net worth is reportedly $1.3 billion dollars.

UPDATE: Planned Parenthood responds after Kanye says they’ve been “placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the Devil’s work.”