Kanye West claims he's running for president and Elon Musk is playing along

Relax, he's probably just promoting his new album.
 By 
Brian Koerber
 on 
Kanye West claims he's running for president and Elon Musk is playing along
Kanye West professional troll. Credit: Evan Vucci/AP/Shutterstock

Kanye West has announced he's running for president. As if this Fourth of July wasn't already cursed enough.

As scattered fireworks celebrations were beginning across crowdless cities on the East Coast Saturday night, Kanye West, the controversial rapper and fashion mogul, decided to log on to Twitter and let the world know that he would be running for president of the United States in 2020.

This is not the first time Kanye has discussed running in 2020, but it's by far his most official statement. Until today, we'd all assumed the election in November would be between Kanye's pal President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, but perhaps this Saturday night surprise will change the game — for better or worse.


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More likely, though, this is just Kanye West trying to promote his new album (which is called God's Country, making it even more notable that he dropped God's name in his tweet) and possibly some of his overpriced clothes.

To make the evening's announcement even weirder, billionaire and notorious Twitter troll Elon Musk decided to immediately "endorse" Kanye on Twitter. It should be noted that the two recently hung out, and, the chances that this is just a big game to them are sky high.

This probable stunt might have been more entertaining in the Before times. But as it stands, we're in midst of historic protests for racial justice and we're still facing down the very real danger of a global pandemic, which continues to ravage the country. Nearly 130,000 Americans have already died of COVID-19, and cases across much of the United States continues to climb.

If Kanye's supposed entrance into the race actually changes the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, it's absolutely what we deserve.

But it's 2020, and I'm tired. We're all tired. So let's just hope this fades faster than the smoke after the Fourth of July fireworks.

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Brian Koerber

Brian was the Culture Editor and has been working at Mashable on the web culture desk since 2014.

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