August 07, 2020 10:49 AM UTC

Kanye Already Said The Quiet Part Out Loud

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• by: Colorado Pols

With rapper Kanye West now officially on the ballot in Colorado as an independent presidential candidate, Randall Lane at Forbes reports that despite what some people responsible for putting Kanye on the ballot are saying (more on that in a moment), at least in Colorado, West has already all but admitted that this really is just a cheap trick intended to peel some number of votes away from Democratic presumed nominee Joe Biden to benefit President Donald Trump:

When it was pointed out that he actually can’t win in 2020—that he won’t be on enough ballots to yield 270 electoral votes, and that a write-in campaign isn’t feasible—and thus was serving as a spoiler, West replied: “I’m not going to argue with you. Jesus is King.”

…In a wide-ranging interview with Forbes last month about his political aspirations, West, who has never voted before, laid out a platform for his “Birthday Party” that included a pro-life plank that alleged that Planned Parenthood was placed in cities by white supremacists, a management style patterned on the fictional country of Wakanda in Black Panther and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. In that interview, West also claimed that he was dumping Trump. “I am taking the red hat off, with this interview.” His reason: “It looks like one big mess to me. I don’t like that I caught wind that he hid in the bunker.”

However, he was reticent to criticize Trump besides that. “Trump is the closest president we’ve had in years to allowing God to still be part of the conversation,” he said.

And West was eager to criticize Biden, and expressed comfort with the idea of doing damage to the former vice president’s White House chances. “I’m not denying it; I just told you.” [Pols emphasis]

Kanye West’s recent behavior has been erratic enough that his wife Kim Kardashian publicly spoke out about West’s ongoing battle with mental illness, and no one should seriously expect West to attract more than the most casual of support, from voters with little or no political acumen. Despite this, we were treated to an unusually ridiculous story from Colorado Public Radio yesterday evening–featuring one of the Republican insiders who signed the form actually pretending that he supports West on the merits:

“The reason I signed was because I think that both major parties have let a lot of Coloradans down,” said elector Seth Jacobson. He’s registered as unaffiliated but worked for former Republican Senate candidate Darryl Glenn and now works for the conservative social media site, CaucusRoom.

Jacobson said he had already decided he wasn’t going to vote for President Trump or Joe Biden. “Kanye has all the requirements to be on the ballot and I did a fair amount of research before I agreed to do this. He’s talking about issues that no else is talking about. I’m very serious about voting for him.”

The moral of the story? There are people in this world who honestly do think you’re stupid.