West also said “marijuana should be free” at the South Carolina event.
Kanye West kicked off his first presidential campaign event in North Charleston, South Carolina, Sunday night, a day before the state deadline to present signatures as an independent candidate.
The rapper appeared shortly after 5 pm at the Exquis Event Center rally with the numbers “2020” in his hair.
West invited a couple of young women from the audience to speak on stage about issues that concerned them, such as educational inequity and police brutality. She then launched into a speech that addressed a wide range of topics, from her battle with opioids to her business dealings with Adidas, before explaining her pro-life stance.
He burst into tears as he spoke of what he said was his father’s desire to abort him, and that his wife have her first child “even when I didn’t want to.”
“I almost killed my daughter. I love my daughter … God wants us to believe,” said West, who has four children with Kim Kardashian West.
“No more Plan B – Plan A,” he said, to a mixed response from the audience.
West clarified that he believes abortion should be legal, but that there should be more support for those who need it.
“The maximum increase would be that everyone with a baby gets a million dollars or something in that range,” West said.
West also said that marijuana “should be free” and answered questions from the audience before the hour-long event ended.
South Carolina requires 10,000 signatures to enter the presidential ballot as an independent candidate. Due to a state of emergency resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, the state deadline for submitting signatures was delayed from last Wednesday to Monday, July 20, clearing the way for West’s Sunday event.
On Saturday, West had tweeted for supporters “to sign up to put me on the ballot in South Carolina.” The state does not allow candidates in writing on the ballot.
All North Charleston West event attendees were asked to sign a COVID-19 disclaimer form, and to keep their social distance and wear a mask.
A week after a campaign aide told a media outlet that West was leaving the race, a source with knowledge of West’s presidential bid told ABC News that the campaign is now working in multiple states to gather signatures, and that the two-week campaign is “maturing and growing.”
According to the source, the team will announce several more campaign events, including one in New York.
Last week, West paid the $ 35,000 registration fee to enter the ballot in Oklahoma. He will need several more states to reach the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the presidency. Currently there are only 306 electoral votes at stake in states where submission deadlines have not yet passed.
Bre Maxwell, a Democratic agent in South Carolina, told ABC News that West’s candidacy for president can cause people like West, 43, who signed up to vote for the first time earlier this month, to vote for this election. .
“It may not even take away Joe Biden, but I think what Kanye will probably be able to do is light a voting block that probably wasn’t going to vote for Joe Biden, the young black millennium who doesn’t care about politics or who’s not involved in politics but are involved with music. “
But Maxwell said West’s bid for the presidency worries him because he feels the focus should be on supporting Biden, the alleged Democratic nominee, and supporting Democratic candidates on the ballot.
“We need all the votes from the people we can get to support Joe Biden,” said Maxwell. “We have to get rid of Donald Trump and his administration. We have to turn the Senate around. We have to keep the House, because that is the only way we can make sure that the United States is Excellent.”
Quinn Scanlan and Mark Osborne of ABC News contributed to this report.
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