The Kanye West 2020 Presidential campaign has had a rough couple of days. Leaving aside the baseline hum of bizarre behavior from West himself, there’s been numerous reports of forged signatures on his ballot petitions.
In Illinois, it was determined that almost two-thirds of the 3,128 signatures on his petition were invalid and he was removed from the ballot. In Wisconsin, officials drew attention to signatures naming “Mickey Mouse” and “Bernie Sanders” as supporters of his, and witnesses say they were tricked into signing. Similar issues have seen him removed from the ballot in New Jersey and some analysts are even arguing that this could lead to criminal charges of electoral fraud against West himself.
This reeks of political dirty tricks and has led to plausible accusations that Republican Party operatives are assisting West on the basis that he’s likely to peel votes away from Democrat candidate Joe Biden. Biden is currently ahead in every poll, so at this point, the Trump team is trying every tactic they can to shore up his support. Now, West himself may have tacitly admitted that he’s running a spoiler campaign to support Trump and doesn’t have any expectation of actually winning.
In an interview with Forbes, he was asked directly whether his Presidential bid was designed to harm Joe Biden. In response, he explained that rather than running for President he was “walking.” He quickly followed that up by clarifying that he was “walking… to win.” The interviewer then put it to him that he mathematically cannot win the election due to not being on the ballot in multiple states, and West responded: “I’m not going to argue with you. Jesus is King.”
It remains to be seen just how far Kanye West 2020 will go. The famously volatile rapper is entirely unpredictable and seems to be making up policies on the go, but right now he’s adamant that he’s taking this right to the wire. He’s recently claimed that he’s planning out a new education curriculum, that he wants to give one million dollars to every expectant mother in the US and that he plans to model his White House on Wakanda from Black Panther.
Whatever happens in the run-up to Election Day, at least it won’t be boring.