Kanye For President? Rapper Announces 2020 Run During VMAs
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- He's rich, popular, polarizing and certainly not afraid to speak his mind. And he wants to be president. It isn't Donald Trump -- it's Kanye West.
The rapper was on stage at the MTV Video Music Awards Sunday night to accept the Video Vanguard Award when he ended his rambling speech with the declaration that he wants to run for president in 2020.
"As you probably could have guessed by this moment, I have decided in 2020 to run for president," West said.
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Apparently missing the part about 2020, Miley Cyrus said that she was switching her vote from Trump to Kanye.
But many New Yorkers were mixed about the idea of West running for president.
"I don't know if that's such a smart idea," one man told 1010 WINS' Derricke Dennis.
"Why not? It's his right, free choice," another woman said.
"What's he gonna get, the fans of his to vote?" another man asked. "I don't even think his fans would be loyal like that."
During his speech, West also said he got high before getting on stage.
"Y'all might be thinking right now, 'I wonder did he smoke something before he came out here?' And the answer is yes, I rolled up a little something, I knocked the edge off," he said.
He also sort of apologized to Taylor Swift for interrupting her acceptance speech in 2009.
"This arena tomorrow is gonna be a completely different setup, this stage will be gone. After that night, the stage was gone, but the effect that it had on people remained," West said. "The problem was the contradiction. The contradiction is I do fight for artists, but in that fight I somehow was disrespectful to artists. I didn't know how to say the right thing, the perfect thing."
He explained how his daughter North West has changed him and ranted against MTV for promoting Swift's presenting the Vanguard Award to him, saying it was just done to boost the ratings.
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