This year, Kanye West celebrated the Fourth Of July in a different way than most people: He announced he was running for president. That decision was met with some backlash, even more so following Kanye’s recent Forbes interview, in which he made some controversial statements about his beliefs and political platform.
Shorty after Kanye’s announcement, Elon Musk, who was photographed with Kanye days earlier, had the rapper’s back, tweeting, “You have my full support!” Musk’s words carried some weight, as the tweet has over 350,000 likes as of this post. However, following the Forbes interview, Musk appears to have reconsidered his endorsement.
You have my full support!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 5, 2020
https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1278408410904629252
In response to a tweet mentioning the anti-vaccine and anti-abortion comments Kanye made in the interview, Musk (in a now-deleted tweet) seemed to at least question his opinion of West and the rapper’s viability as a presidential candidate, writing, “We may have more differences of opinion than I anticipated.”
https://twitter.com/beeeaanz/status/1281001263451299840
In the interview, Kanye expressed his skepticism about vaccines, saying, “It’s so many of our children that are being vaccinated and paralyzed… So when they say the way we’re going to fix COVID is with a vaccine, I’m extremely cautious. 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.”
Speaking about abortion, he said, “I am pro-life because I’m following the word of the Bible,” and insisted that Planned Parenthood does “the Devil’s work.” Naturally, the organization was not happy about what Kanye said.
