#Kanye West drops support for Trump in interview on 2020 presidential run

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Kanye West stands as he talks with President Trump in the Oval Office in 2018.
Ron Sachs/Consolidated News Pictures/Getty Images

Rapper Kanye West said he no longer supports President Trump and also sounded off against the Democratic party, in a wide-ranging interview discussing his political aspirations.

Speaking to Forbes Magazine in an interview published Wednesday, the billionaire sneaker mogul, who announced his 2020 candidacy Sunday, said that he was “taking the red hat off, with this interview,” and starting his own party for 2020, “the Birthday Party.”

If President Trump wasn’t already the GOP candidate, West told the magazine he would run as a Republican, adding that, “I will run as an independent if Trump is there.”

He said his third party will be called the Birthday Party, “Because when we win, it’s everybody’s birthday.”

He noted his top two advisors are his first supporters, his wife Kim Kardashian and Elon Musk.

West, who admitted in the interview to never having voted before, did not provide specific reasons for his decision to stop supporting the president.

Instead, he said he had lost confidence in Trump, saying, “It looks like one big mess to me. I don’t like that I caught wind that he hid in the bunker.”

West went on to explain his original support for the president, saying that “Trump is the closest president we’ve had in years to allowing God to still be part of the conversation.”

Asked about the Democratic party, West did not pull punches.

“That is a form of racism and white supremacy and white control to say that all Black people need to be Democrat and to assume that me running is me splitting the vote. All of that information is being charged up on social media platforms by Democrats. And Democrats used to tell me, the same Democrats have threatened me…. The reason why this is the first day I registered to vote is because I was scared. 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 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,” he said.

He added, “One of the main reasons I wore the red hat as a protest to the segregation of votes in the Black community.”

West has not taken any concrete steps to actually file to run for the presidency, including declaring his candidacy.

In October 2018, he delivered an F-bomb and curse-filled rant during a meeting in the Oval Office — after which President Trump said the MAGA-hat wearing rapper could one day fill his shoes as the commander-in-chief.