Kanye West says he’s done with Trump: ‘I’m taking the red hat off’

Rapper tells Forbes that if he wins the presidency, he’ll turn the U.S. into Wakanda.

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Kanye West answers questions from Sr. pastor Joel Osteen during service at Lakewood Church in Houston.

Kanye West

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Kanye West says he is no longer a Trump supporter.

The rapper, who once praised President Donald Trump and said the two share “dragon energy,” tells Forbes that he is “taking the red hat off” — a reference to Trump’s trademark red “Make America Great Again” cap.

In a story published Wednesday, West also insisted that his weekend announcement that he’s running for President was not a stunt to drum up interest in an upcoming album.

The Trump presidency, he said, “looks like one big mess to me. I don’t like that I caught wind that [Trump] hid in the bunker.”

Forbes spoke to West from his ranch near Cody, Wyoming, in what the magazine called “four rambling hours of interviews.” West, who says he’s been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, often referred to himself in the third person and claimed he was “one of the most powerful humans” although acknowledged there were “a lot of alien level superpowers.”

He said if he won the presidency, he would model his White House on the fictional land in “Black Panther,” saying, “Let’s get back to Wakanda.”

West has already missed the deadline to qualify for the ballot in several states, and it’s unclear if he has the ability or willingness to collect the signatures required to qualify in others.

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Kanye West meets with President Donald Trump on Oct. 11, 2018, in the Oval Office.

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In the interview, West also said:

• He caught the coronavirus in late February: “Chills, shaking in the bed, taking hot showers, looking at videos telling me what I’m supposed to do to get over it. I remember someone had told me Drake had the coronavirus and my response was Drake can’t be sicker than me!”

• A coronavirus vaccine isn’t necessarily desirable.:“When they say the way we’re going to fix Covid is with a vaccine, I’m extremely cautious,” he added.That’s the mark of the beast. They want to put chips inside of us, they want to do all kinds of things, to make it where we can’t cross the gates of heaven.”

• Speculation that his candidacy will hurt likely Democratic nominee Joe Biden is ill-founded: “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.”

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