Over the weekend a wide-ranging Elon Musk interview with The New York Times was published. As you can tell from your built in powers of intuition (and also the headline) one of the topics that came up was Kanye West's current presidential campaign.
Specifically, Musk thinks the time for Kanye's run would be better suited for 2024.
“I’ve done my best to convince him that 2024 would be better than 2020,” Musk said to the publication, with him going on to explain that he wouldn't want for allegations thrown West's way to accuse him of splitting the Black vote with Joe Biden.
Note that, when West first tweeted he was running for president on July 4, Musk quickly told him that "You have my full support!" A week-and-a-half after that Musk said he still backed the rapper's bid. He also added, at that time, that he thought 2024 would be a better year for West to run.
In the same Sunday interview with The Times, Musk said he's known West for "at least" a decade, and added that he contacted the rapper for a check-in after Kanye publicly alleged (via Twitter) that wife Kim Kardashian had sent a doctor to Wyoming to lock him up. Read up on that full tweet-spree here.
“When he was about a third of the way through the tweet rampage, just to see if he was doing OK, I sent him a text saying, you know, just checking on you, a lot of people are worried, just wondering if you’re OK," said Musk. “And he called me back and he actually seemed fine. He video FaceTimed me and he was in Wyoming with a bunch of friends. He seemed fine on the call. But it sounds like things are, you know, not fine. There seem to be a lot of issues.”
On that last note, it was just eight days ago in which West was in South Carolina for his first campaign rally. During that rally (amongst many disconnected subjects) West broke down in tears talking about abortion, in a very blunt way, as it related to his life.
A few days after that he apologized on Twitter to Kim Kardashian for sharing so much about their personal life.
"I would like to apologize to my wife Kim for going public with something that was a private matter," West said. "I did not cover her like she has covered me. To Kim I want to say I know I hurt you. Please forgive me. Thank you for always being there for me."
Fast forward to Monday (today) and West/West's team at least appears to be committed enough to continuing his presidential run that they made an effort to get lots of signatures so he can be on the ballot in Missouri. He needs 10,000 such signatures from registered voters in that state to get on the ballot for the November 3 election. The deadline to do so was 5 p.m. on Monday. Missouri's Secretary of State says that they received the campaign's submission prior to the deadline, but they're still tallying them up to see if there's enough of them to qualify.
What you're hoping for here probably varies wildly.
As for non-Kanye topics, Musk talked about accusations that he'd hooked up with Amber Heard while she was still married to Johnny Depp. By "talked about" we mean vehemently denied.
"I definitely was not having an affair with Amber while she was married to Johnny, this is totally false,” he said. He also denied he ever had a threesome with Heard and Cara Delevingne, adding “We did not have the threesome, you know. So I think people think these things are generally more salacious than they are.”
The subject of a threat from Depp to cut off Musk's dick also came up, with Musk responding “If Johnny wants a cage fight, just let me know.” Prospective PPV buyers should note that it's almost certain he was joking, as the NYT added that the response was "mischievous," and that it was followed by Musk's "famous giggle."
The recent Twitter hack (which included him, in addition to lots of other famous people) also doesn't appear to be keeping him up at night. Nor would any other potential exposure of his DMs. That's because, as Musk told The Times, he basically uses his private Twitter messages for meme exchanges.
“I’m not that concerned about my DMs being made public,” Musk relayed. “I mean, we can probably cherry pick some section of my DMs that sound bad out of context but overall my DMs mostly consist of swapping memes.”
As he's done numerous times now, he also spoke about COVID-19. On that subject he said that it makes sense to lock down those most vulnerable, while also stating his belief that he had the virus back in January.
“I think the reality of COVID is that it is dangerous if you’re elderly and have pre-existing conditions,” he said. “It absolutely makes sense to have a lockdown if you’re vulnerable, but I do not think it makes sense to have a lockdown if you’re not vulnerable.”
Formal interviews with him are rare so, if interested, check out the whole thing here.
