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Published 08:15 IST, July 5th 2020

'I'm running for President of the United States': Rapper Kanye West announces bid for 2020

Kanye West has shocked everyone by announcing his presidential bid in his tweet on July 4. West has publicly toyed with the idea several times in the past.

Reported by: Urvashi Kandpal
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Kanye West
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American rapper, singer, songwriter Kanye West announced on the Fourth of July that he will be running for President of the United States. He tweeted his intentions of running for the top office through on America's 244th Independence Day and wrote, "I am running for president of the United States! #2020VISION" complete with an American flag emoji.

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This isn’t the first time the American rapper has pledged a run for the White House. At a promotional outing for his collaboration with GAP in November last year, he made a statement about not only his progress but also of the African-American society. Following which he had announced that he would run for the presidency of the United States of America in 2024. 

"When I run for President in 2024," West had said, interrupted by an outbreak of laughter in the audience. "What y'all laughing at? We would create so many jobs! I'm not going to run, I'm going to walk. When you see headlines saying Kanye's crazy — one in three African Americans are in jail and all the celebrities are in jail also because they can't say nothing, they got no opinion, they're so scared!"

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At the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards, he announced onstage that he would be running for President, leading many to wonder whether he would run the following year. His tweet on Saturday announcing the presidential bid has been shocking as he has decided to run in 2020 itself. However, it's not that surprising as, over the past year, the singer has leaned much more into politics, having had a handful of widely-publicised meetings with the current President Donald Trump.

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Apart from this, the rapper is known to often publicly pronounce himself in superlative terms. At an interview last year, he called himself a creative genius and claimed that his music was perfect. He claimed to be "unquestionably, undoubtedly, the greatest human artist of all time”. Moreover, he had claimed that he wants people to know that he has money and that he is a genius, for which he had plans to officially change his name to Christian Genius Billionaire Kanye West.

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Updated 08:15 IST, July 5th 2020