Considering that we’re in the middle of a global pandemic, we’re going to go out on a limb and say ‘No thank you!’ to U.S. presidential hopeful Kanye West’s newly revealed anti-vaccine stance. And while we’re at it, we’ll pass on a large percentage of the rest of his platform, too — despite the likelihood that West may be more qualified to run a country than the current U.S. president. West, who announced his third-party candidacy on July 4th, gave an extensive interview to
Forbes this week, revealing the issues he’ll be running on this fall under the banner of his Elon Musk-backed Birthday Party. Nick Cave is not pleased.Seemingly based on a handful of theories that feature Satan at the centre, a devoutly Christian West told
Forbes that if elected president, he’d take a hard stance against both vaccinations (
calling them “the mark of the beast”) and reproductive rights. The rapper believes that Planned Parenthood clinics “have been placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the devil’s work.” He’ll also advocate for religion to be reintroduced into the education system.[video_embed id='1989882']RELATED: Kanye announces 2020 presidential run[/video_embed]“I am pro-life because I’m following the word of the bible,” said West, who claims that when it comes to schools, the separation of church and state has led to an increase in murder, suicide, and drug use. He told the magazine that, in opposition to what he sees as the devil’s plan, he’d “reinstate God's state, in God’s country, the fear and love of God in all schools and organizations.”In the past, Kanye has been vocal about his support for Donald Trump, backing up his words by donning a MAGA hat at public events. His wife, Kim Kardashian, has worked with the current president on critical issues like prison reform. But with his Independence Day announcement, West said that he’s officially breaking ties with Trump. “I would run as a Republican if Trump wasn’t there. I will run as an Independent if Trump is there,” he told
Forbes. “One of the main reasons I wore the red hat as a protest to the segregation of votes in the Black community.”West, who recently registered to vote for the first time, described his frustration over being told who he could and couldn’t vote for based on the colour of his skin, outlining the racism inherent in the idea that Black people should automatically be giving their votes to Democratic candidates. “The reason why this is the first day I registered to vote is because I was scared,” he explained. “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 celebrity 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.”As for his vision for 2021, having a West-led government in the West Wing would look something like the fictional utopian government that rules Wakanda in Marvel’s
Black Panther movie. “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,” said Kanye, saying that his government would be based on the same spirit of innovation he brought to his Yeezy fashion line and other design work with Nike and Louis Vuitton. “That is a positive idea: you got Kanye West, one of the most powerful humans — I’m not saying
the most because you got a lot of alien-level superpowers and it’s only collectively that we can set it free. Let’s get back to Wakanda… like in the movie in Wakanda when the king went to visit that lead scientist to have the shoes wrap around her shoes. Just the amount of innovation that can happen, the amount of innovation in medicine — like big pharma — we are going to work, innovate, together.”Just not on vaccines.[video_embed id='1978317']Before you go: Kanye West is launching a Yeezy cosmetics line[/video_embed]
