Kanye West has said he is open to returning to politics, insisting that he had not been put off by his failed presidential bid in 2020.
The rapper, whose father battled stomach cancer in 2018, said that he intended to work to cure the disease.
He said he would work on promoting ‘fresh air and food’.
In October 2018, West said his father Ray’s cancer was in remission, and he was embarking on a strange diet to celebrate.
‘Overcome fear,’ Kanye captioned an Instagram photo showing the insects. ‘My dad and I are going to eat this plate of bugs to celebrate him beating cancer. No more fear.’
He discussed in the wide-ranging interview his co-parenting with ex-wife Kim Kardashian, saying they clashed on certain issues, but worked to resolve them.
Asked on Thursday if he had future political aspirations, West replied: ‘Yes, absolutely.
‘You know, that time wasn’t in God’s time. I’m sure there are lives that were saved.
‘I’m sure God had me fall on the sword and say this is not the time,’ he told ABC News on Thursday night.
‘But he’s a redeemer. He’s given me this oxygen, he’s given me this platform, he’s put amazing people around me.
‘He’s given me new purposes. A new lease on life. New air to breathe. And a new respect.’
He added that he was spending time with Jared Kushner.
Kanye West has spoken to ABC News, in an interview that previewed on Thursday night
‘His brother said he’d kill him if he went back to the White House. That’s the answer,’ West replied, when asked whether that was a genuine friendship or a political move.
West said he had met the mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, and thought ‘he would make a really good president, also.’
Linsey Davis asked: ‘In addition to you?’
West replied with a smile.
Davis asked him whether he thought social media was helpful or harmful to him.
In a series of Instagram posts last month, the rapper – who has been open in the past about his bipolar disorder diagnosis and ongoing struggles with mental illness – accused Kardashian of trying to control their children’s lives and schooling.
West said he thought social media could be helpful and harmful.
‘That’s one of my favorite questions of this interview,’ West said.
‘We can use a car to rush somebody to the hospital. Or we could use a car and accidentally hit somebody while we’re rushing somebody to the hospital.
‘It’s all about how we use it.’
West, 45, was asked by Linsey Davis about his relationship with social media
Davis asked whether he felt social media was helpful or harmful to him
West and Kardashian have four children together: North, Saint, Chicago and Psalm
West was asked about his parenting style, and what it was like to co-parent with his ex-wife Kim Kardashian.
She filed for divorce in February 2021, and their separation was finalized in June this year.
The couple share four children – daughter North, nine; six-year-old son Saint; daughter Chicago, four, and three-year-old son Psalm.
‘I have a voice, and I don’t agree with certain things, as a dad and as a Christian,’ he said.
‘I have a right to have a voice on what my kids are wearing, what they are watching, what they are eating.’
His comments come weeks after he accused his ex-wife and Hulu, the Kardashian family’s streaming giant partner, of railroading him when choosing where the kids go to school.
He compared himself to a sperm donor, arguing that he had been left without a say, and fumed over the fact that the children were attending an expensive private school in Los Angeles when he wanted them to go to his school, the Donda Academy, set up in honor of his late mother.
‘I have a platform, and I get to say what so many dads can’t say out loud. There are so many situations where an entire family can go and basically take control of the kids.
‘I know so many people that hit me, like, out of Chicago, and say: yo, I just went through the same thing as you.
‘People will call me and say hey, are you OK? And I’m like, well I’m OK now because I said something. But I wasn’t OK before with the situation, and that’s why I said something.
Kardashian dated comedian Pete Davidson after her split from West. The pair parted ways earlier this year
‘And there are little nuances of what was happening before at Gap. What was happening at Adidas. And what was happening at home.
‘It was all something of a disregard for what I co-created.
‘I co-created the children. I co-created the product at Adidas. I co-created the product at Gap.
‘And I let everyone know that there is actually a through-line, a parallel.
‘And that does touch on discrimination.’
He accused Kardashian, in a conversation he shared on Instagram, of disrespecting him because she is ‘half white’.
‘Y’all don’t have so so over my black children and where they go to school,’ he wrote in one message.
The Chicago-born musician and businessman, however, said on Thursday he had a ‘new respect’ for Kardashian, and that he always wanted her to be ‘calm’.
‘This is the mother of my children, and I apologize for any stress that I have caused, even in my frustration, because God calls me to be stronger,’ he said.
‘I need this person to be less stressed and of the best, sound mind and as calm as possible to be able to raise those children at the end of the day.’
West posted screenshots of his text conversations with his ex-wife where she begged him to stop mentioning her mother, Kris Jenner, and to stop airing their dirty laundry
He wrote something resembling a poem that alluded to the Kardashians on Hulu while speaking more about his mental health and his children’s school
‘Whatever I’m doing, it’s not working’, Kim joked of her approach to romance during a recent appearance on James Corden’s Late Late Show
At Donda, he said children ‘spread’ and ‘sing’ the gospel.
He added that his aim was ‘to build a school that gives kids practical tools that they need in the world.’
He said, in an interview earlier this month, he wanted children to learn about space travel in a ‘shoutout to Elon Musk’.
‘We have to allow for self-confidence. So many schools take away from the confidence that these future leaders have for themselves.
‘Those less confident leaders lead on lying, as opposed to leading on the truth first.
‘We have to educate the critical mass on esteem, on religions – all the religions. We have to educate the critical mass on yoga, financial literacy, we have to expose information.
‘We have to educate on physics – how do things actually work? How do pipes and water actually work? Our school is around engineering.’
On Thursday, West vowed to continue with his legal fight with Adidas and Gap, saying: ‘We got new lawyers…we really had to level up and really show them who’s the new boss in town.’
West said on Thursday that he was continuing his legal fight with Adidas and Gap
He was confronted with the infamous 2013 video of him unleashing on journalist Sway Calloway, who asked him innocently why he didn’t launch the clothing and shoe brand alone.
In the clip, Kanye fumed: ‘You don’t got the answers, Sway!’
On Thursday, he relented, that he had been right all along.
‘You know what, I’d go ahead and said SWAY had the answer. People are gonna be like ‘no!”
West has been open in the past about his bipolar diagnosis.
In a candid 2019 interview with David Letterman for his Netflix show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, he explained how he felt during manic episodes.
‘You have this moment [where] you feel everyone wants to kill you. You pretty much don’t trust anyone.
‘When you’re in this state, you’re hyper-paranoid about everything, everyone.
‘This is my experience, other people have different experiences. Everyone now is an actor. Everything’s a conspiracy.
‘You feel the government is putting chips in your head. You feel you’re being recorded.
‘You feel all these things.’
At the time, he advocated for taking daily medication.
‘If you don’t take medication every day to keep you at a certain state, you have a potential to ramp up and it can take you to a point where you can even end up in the hospital.
‘And you start acting erratic, as TMZ would put it.’