It seems that Kanye West is running for President after all. Just days after he appeared to wrap up his campaign, West has hosted a deeply strange rally in a conference hall in Charleston, South Carolina. He appeared in a bulletproof security vest with ‘2020’ shaved onto the back of his head and addressed the crowd without a microphone.
During a rambling speech, West discussed abortion rights, after having attracted controversy last week for an interview in which he described Planned Parenthood as an organization run by “white supremacists to do the Devil’s work.”
During the rally, he also broke down in floods of tears as he explained that his father wanted to abort him, saying that: “There would have been no Kanye West, because my dad was too busy.” He then went on to scream whilst sobbing: “I almost killed my daughter! I almost killed my daughter!”
When challenged by a member of the audience on his opinions, he said, apparently off the cuff, that he’s not interested in making abortion illegal, but that everyone that becomes pregnant should be given a million dollars. He then concluded:
“The only thing that can free us is by obeying the rules that were given to us for a promised land. Abortion should be legal because guess what? The law is not by God anyway, so what is legality?”
West also launched into a condemnation of 19th-century abolitionist Harriet Tubman, claiming that “Harriet Tubman never actually freed the slaves, she just had the slaves go work for other white people.” This was met with shocked silence from the crowd, broken only by an exasperated cry of “come on man!”
But whether Ye is seriously intending to run or not, his plans might be scuppered by late registration. He’s already missed the deadline to qualify for the ballot in many states and is yet to collect enough signatures to appear on the ballot in a number of others. However, he’s apparently confirmed to be on the ballot for Oklahoma, so at least in that state voters will have the truly wonderful choice between Kanye West, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Isn’t democracy grand?
