Trump: ‘Shouldn’t be hard’ for Kanye West to take away votes from Biden

by Marty Johnson - 07/11/20 9:07 AM ET

President Trump on Saturday expressed confidence that rapper Kanye West — who recently announced that he plans to launch a late bid for the White House — could steal votes from Trump’s presumptive Democratic opponent in November, former Vice President Joe Biden.

“That shouldn’t be hard,” Trump tweeted, referring to West taking votes away from Biden. “Corrupt Joe has done nothing good for Black people!”

That shouldn’t be hard. Corrupt Joe has done nothing good for Black people! https://t.co/R4r0svuT4u

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 11, 2020

West in the past has been a big Trump supporter, meeting with the president multiple times and often wearing Trump’s signature red “Make America Great Again” hat.

However, when announcing his presidential bid, West told Forbes that he is “taking the red hat off” and that Trump no longer has his support.

“It looks like one big mess to me,” West, 43, said. “One of the main reasons I wore the red hat as a protest to the segregation of votes in the Black community. … Also, other than the fact that I like Trump hotels and the saxophones in the lobby.”

When asked about potentially splitting the Democratic vote, West replied that such as suggestion was “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.”

Trump appeared to be unfazed by the news during an interview this week with Fox News’s Sean Hannity.

“He is always going to be for us, and his wife [Kim Kardashian West] is going to be for us,” Trump told Hannity. “[He’s a] very good guy. He is a person that I get along with very well. At the end, I think he would support us over anyone else. We have to stop the radical left from taking over our country.”

It is unclear what West’s strategy will be or even if he will actually run, as the famous artist has already missed the filing deadline in many states to appear on the ballot in November.

West argued in his Forbes interview that he should be allowed more time to file because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“I’m speaking with experts, I’m going to speak with Jared Kushner, the White House, with Biden,” he said.