Kanye West to hold first campaign rally in South Carolina as he pushes unlikely presidential bid

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Kanye West has broken down in tears during a wild rally to launch his presidential campaign, revealing that Kim Kardashian wanted to have an abortion but that God came to him and told him it was not right. 

Two weeks after announcing his unlikely bid for president, Kanye West held his first campaign event in South Carolina on Sunday.

‘I don’t give a f*** if I win the presidency or not,’ he declared.

‘There are homeless people in front of the Gucci store.

‘I care about these things. And I am in service of God.

‘God has a plan for us, as his people, to be finally free.’

The 43-year-old rapper’s rally was held at the Exquis Event Center in North Charleston for registered guests only, according to a campaign document obtained by Politico. 

Amid the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, all attendees were told they would be required to wear masks, sign a COVID-19 liability release form and practice social distancing.

The face mask rule was not universally enforced, however, with attendees climbing onto the stage to question West without face masks.

‘Politics, America, Trump, Biden, nor Kanye West can free us,’ he told the crowd.

‘The only thing that can free us is obeying the rules that were given to us as a promised land.’

West told a story about his wife Kim Kardashian West’s pregnancy.

‘And let me go to Planned Parenthood,’ he said, beginning the story.

‘My girlfriend called me screaming, crying. I’m a rapper. And she said I’m pregnant. She was crying.’

West said he was weighing up what to do, when he received what he interpreted as a sign from God.

He told that he was in Paris, working on his laptop at the time. 

‘My screen went black and white,’ he said.

‘And God said, if you f*** with my b****** I f*** with yours.

‘And I called my girlfriend and said we’re going to have this child.

‘Even if my wife were to divorce me after this speech, she brought North into this world, when I did not want to.’

West, growing emotional, then told the story of his own childhood.

‘My Mum saved my life. My Dad wanted to abort me,’ he said.

‘There would have been no Kanye West. Because my Dad was too busy.’ 

West spent much of the time discussing abortion, and announced that he wanted women to be given money by the government for bearing children, to discourage abortion. 

‘Abortion should be legal but the option of maximum increase should be available,’ he said. 

‘Everybody who has a baby gets a million dollars or something.’ 

He said that he was concerned about gun violence, but supported gun ownership.

‘When other countries come in, and you have no weapons, what do you think will happen?’ he asked.

‘You’re enslaved.

‘Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.’

On Saturday evening, West, a former supporter of President Donald Trump, urged his 29.8 million Twitter followers to help him acquire signatures to get on the state’s ballot.

‘Hi guys please sign up to put me on the ballot in South Carolina at any of these locations,’ he wrote, listing eight venues. ‘You can also sign up at the website.’

The father-of-four’s rally comes just days after reportedly dropping out of the 2020 Presidential election.  

Steve Kramer, an election strategist hired by West to focus on getting his name on the ballot in Florida and South Carolina, told Intelligencer, on Thursday, ‘He’s out’.

At the time, Kramer maintained that West’s bid was always serious and there were 180 people working in the ground in Florida when the decision was made to call the effort off. 

‘I’ll let you know what I know once I get all our stuff canceled. We had over 180 people out there today,’ he initially told the outlet when the Florida campaign appeared to have come to an end.

‘I have nothing good or bad to say about Kanye,’ he later added.

‘Everyone has their personal decision about why they make decisions. Running for president has to be one of the hardest things for someone to actually contemplate at that level.’

Campaign professionals told the Intelligencer that West had started attempts to get his named on the ballot as a third-party candidate last week to mount a challenge against President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden.

One source said they had been approached to go to Florida to collect the signatures needed to make the ballot in the state by Wednesday’s deadline.

To appear on the ballot in the Sunshine State in November, West would’ve  needed 132,781 signatures by July 15.

Kramer also added that he believed West’s campaign team were ‘working over weekend there, formalizing the FEC and other things that they’ve got to do when you have a lot of corporate lawyers involved’.

He said they had ‘overwhelming support to get him on the ballot’ and that ‘whether anybody is going to vote for him or not is up to them’.

‘Any candidate running for president for the first time goes through these hiccups,’ Kramer said.

He later told the Intelligencer that the staff were told the drive to get on the ballot was over, on the same day that West tweeted a pictured of himself registering to vote in Wyoming.

‘I want to show you how I just registered to vote,’ West had said.

West announced he is running for president of the United States, just four months before election day, on July 4.

The 21-time Grammy winner celebrated Independence Day by revealing his plans on Twitter, tweeting: ‘We must now realize the promise of America by trusting God, unifying our vision and building our future. I am running for president of the United States! #2020VISION.’ 

The performer has sparked speculation over the years that he would potentially enter the presidential race one day, most recently in November, when he said he planned to run in 2024.

In his Twitter announcement, West revealed little of his plans, but later spoke about his platform in an interview with Forbes.

In his Forbes interview, West first seemed to say that he hadn’t yet decided whether he would run as an independent candidate, but was giving himself the next 30 days to decide what to do, even though he’d have missed filing deadlines for several state ballots by that time.

West said that he believed he could use coronavirus as a reason for being placed on those ballots, though.

But at some point during the interview, West said that he had decided to run and that his party would be called the ‘Birthday Party’ because ‘when we win, it’s everybody’s birthday’.

West has previously publicly supported President Trump, wearing MAGA hats and even going to the White House to meet with him, despite admitting that he’s never voted in a presidential election in his life.

West told Forbes that he has since lost confidence in Trump and that ‘it looks like one big mess to me.’

He named Michelle Tidball, 57, as his running mate ahead of the 2020 election.

Tidball hails from Cody, Wyoming – the same town where West owns a $14 million ranch – but she has scrubbed clean her web presence in recent days. 

However, internet archives reveal a glimpse into the mind of the elusive ‘Biblical life coach’, who reportedly ran the website Yarash.org.

The site is currently ‘under construction’, but TMZ accessed one archived page featuring a biography of Tidball, which describes her journey to religious enlightenment.

Tidball was reportedly visited by God when she was just six months old and on the brink of death.

Among other things, the famed rapper said in the Forbes interview he believes vaccines are ‘the mark of the beast’ and that ‘Planned Parenthoods have been placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the Devil’s work’.

He later posted and deleted a pro-life tweet saying calling six-month fetuses ‘souls’ that ‘deserve to live’.

West said that his wife, Kim Kardashian, and Tesla founder Elon Musk were his advisors at the moment and that he had suggested Musk could be ‘the head of our space program’.

While there is no official deadline to enter the U.S. presidential race, candidates must meet certain filing requirements under Ballot Access Laws that vary by state. 

The deadline to add independent candidates to the ballot had not yet passed in many states, including California, when West announced but were fast approaching. 

He had already missed deadlines to add his name to the presidential ballot in six states by July 4. 

Of the 538 Electoral College votes total, West has already missed out on 102 of those votes if he were to successfully make his way onto the ballot in other states – as the registration date has passed for North Carolina, Texas, New York, Maine, New Mexico and Indiana. 

Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina and West Virginia all have July deadlines also. 

He could, however, have run in these states as a write-in candidate. Although, rules for this type of candidacy vary from state to state and in many states do not count or are tallied as part of the ‘other’ category.

The late registration – also the name of West’s 2005 album – would prevent him from standing any real chance against Trump and presumed Democratic candidate Biden.

West’s announcement was met with with mixed reactions of skepticism and excitement, as online bookmakers cut his odds of winning the election from 500/1 to 50/1. 

A national poll released on Tuesday revealed that West was polling at two percent and that his inclusion hurt Trump’s number more than they did Biden’s.  

According to The Hill, respondents of the poll were first asked who they would vote for in November, without mentioning West’s name. 

Biden won out with 48 percent to Trump’s 40 percent. 

When West was included in the options, Biden’s tally remained at 48 percent but Trump dropped to 39 percent.  

 

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