By Brian Doherty

Kanye West, the hip hop and fashion mogul whose public moves in the past few years have included a controversial flirtation with MAGA-ism and a turn toward pure Christian messaging in his music, chose the nation’s birthday to announce this via tweet:

The Federal Election Commission’s website shows no sign yet that he’s done any of the legal filings to really run for the office. But he has already cleared what may be the most important hurdle toward such endeavors: the public support of his wife, Kim Kardashian West, who retweeted his announcement with apparent approval, adding merely a flag icon to her husband’s declaration. Tech mogul Elon Musk is also already backing Kanye’s candidacy.

As I pointed out in a 2019 Reason story, despite his oft-repeated fandom for President Donald Trump, the only specific policy issues West has been public about supporting are criminal justice reform, getting more jobs into American cities, and gun control. He and Kim Kardashian West have been effective lobbyists for prison reform, both generically and in the specific matter of getting the nonviolent drug offender Alice Johnson out of prison.

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