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Kanye West Now Claims He's Taking Off His 'Make America Great Again' Hat

Though he also seemed to contradict the notion that he's dumping Trump in the same wild interview.

Kanye West is dumping his “Make America Great Again” cap for a birthday hat. Supposedly.

Days after the hip-hop superstar tweeted that he’s running for president, he spoke with Forbes in a baffling interview (blatant publicity stunt?) in which he discussed conspiracy theories, running the White House like the fictional kingdom of Wakanda from “Black Panther,” and allegedly pulling his support from Donald Trump.

Forbes, a magazine that’s been making a habit of outing West’s family members as nonbillionaires, described the Tuesday interview as “four rambling hours” in which he provided some of the following insights about his potential campaign:

His new political party is apparently the “Birthday Party.”

“Because when we win, it’s everybody’s birthday,” West said.

As far as his support for Trump, West says he’s “taking the red hat off.”

Talking about the president, the rapper said “it looks like one big mess to me,” adding that he didn’t like that Trump “hid in the bunker” amid anti-racism protests.

He also spoke about his previous support for the president, saying it was to protest the “segregation of votes in the Black community” ― and because he likes Trump hotels.

He wants to make the White House more like Wakanda.

The rapper told Forbes, “A lot of Africans do not like the movie [“Black Panther”] and representation of themselves in … Wakanda. But 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.”

But don’t expect him to be campaigning on “Wakanda Forever.”

West says his campaign slogan is “YES” and his running mate is Michelle Tidball, whom Forbes describes as “an obscure preacher from Wyoming.”

Rapper Kanye West speaks during his October 2018 meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
Rapper Kanye West speaks during his October 2018 meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office.

The rapper has a history of inflammatory comments, infamously saying in 2018 that slavery was a “choice,” and throughout the interview he made a number of other disturbing assertions. Despite claiming to have had COVID-19, he said he was cautious of vaccines, calling them the “mark of the beast” and saying, “They want to put chips inside of us.” He also called Black History Month “torture porn.”

As far as pulling his support from Trump, West seemed to contradict himself in the same interview, saying the president isn’t “in my way, he may be a part of my way.” Forbes noted that West is also OK with “siphoning off Black votes from the Democratic nominee, thus helping Trump.”

“I’m not denying it, I just told you. To say that the Black vote is Democratic is a form of racism and white supremacy,” West said.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, the rapper denied that his presidential bid was a publicity stunt for his new album. Why would it be, right? It’s not like running for president as a publicity stunt has ever been successful anyway.

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