Tesla CEO Elon Musk has publicly supported Kanye West’s ambitious 2020 presidential bid, but the two have reportedly been talking about this for years.
In a new interview with Forbes on Wednesday, West discussed his presidential “bid,” which he randomly announced on Twitter on the Fourth of July and confirmed his earnest intentions to follow through with it. He told Forbes that Musk is one of his advisers, alongside his wife, Kim Kardashian West.
“We’ve been talking about this for years,” West said, adding, “I proposed to him to be the head of our space program.”
Musk initially responded to Kanye’s now-viral tweet by saying, “You have my full support!”
You have my full support!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 5, 2020
The duo has been friends for a while, and Musk praised West in 2015 for Time’s annual list of the most influential people.
“But Kanye does think. Constantly. About everything. And he wants everybody else to do the same: to engage, question, push boundaries,” Musk wrote in Time. “Now that he’s a pop-culture juggernaut, he has the platform to achieve just that.”
Musk previously supported Democratic candidate Andrew Yang for the 2020 presidential race. He has not publicly commented on whether or not he is actually one of West’s advisers.
Both Musk and West are notorious for being outspoken and often stirring up controversy for their opinions, so a potential partnership on an unexpected and last-minute presidential campaign isn’t out of the question.
But West’s presidential bid may be over before it even starts. He’s missed the deadline to file as an independent candidate in North Carolina, Texas, New Mexico, and Indiana, according to Ballotpedia. Nine states including, New York and Florida, have upcoming July deadlines where West still might be able to make the ballot.
