Kanye: How Trump’s allies are using him
“Ready or not,” said Ryan Bort in RollingStone.com, “Kanye 2020 is happening.” Rapper Kanye West, 43, has secured ballot spots in five states so far— Colorado, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Utah, and Vermont—for his thirdparty bid for the presidency, and he’s getting plenty of help from allies of President Trump. West recently met with Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and de facto campaign manager, for a “friendly discussion,” as Kushner put it. In fact, Kushner reportedly speaks to West nearly every day. Meanwhile, “GOP-affiliated operative types” are scrambling in battleground states like Ohio and Wisconsin to amass enough signatures to get West’s name on the ballot there. The goal, of course, is to help Trump’s re-election bid by siphoning voters away from presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden—which West doesn’t dispute. “I’m not denying it,” he said. Trump, for his part, claimed not to be pushing West’s candidacy, but conceded, “I think it’s great.”
Even for Trump and his allies, this is a new low, said Molly Roberts in The Washington Post. West’s wife, Kim Kardashian West, says her husband has been struggling with a very public bipolar episode in which he tearfully said he’d nearly aborted their first daughter, and attacked family members for trying to get him psychiatric help. But the Trump campaign is hoping that West will draw a crucial sliver of black votes, the way third-party candidates Jill Stein and Gary Johnson drew enough protest votes to help Trump eke out a victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Republicans truly must be “desperate” if they think African-Americans will cast ballots for West— a known Trump fan—just because he’s black.
It’s far from certain that West would help Trump, anyway, said Brian Doherty in Reason.com. He’s only polling at 2 percent nationally, and his platform includes such conservative-leaning planks as a return to school prayer and getting federal aid for faith-based groups. West is still dangerous, said Dylan Scott in Vox.com. “The 2016 election was decided by 100,000 or so votes in three states,” including fewer than 23,000 in Wisconsin. Even 2 percent this year could change the outcome in a crucial state. “The stakes are too high for West to be dismissed as a joke.”