Nick Cannon Says He’s Voting for Kanye West

Kanye West picked up a celebrity endorsement on Saturday. Nick Cannon said he will vote for the rapper, who began his 2020 presidential campaign on July 4. Cannon said it was time for another Black man to lead this U.S. The Masked Singer host has been at the center of controversy himself recently, as he was fired from hosting Wild N’ Out due to anti-Semitic comments made on his YouTube show.

Cannon was stopped at Los Angeles International Airport by TMZ, which asked him how he felt about West’s presidential run. “I love it!” the former America’s Got Talent host said. “Yeah. We need another Black man in power.” He also said he would vote for West for Commander in Chief.

Last month, ViacomCBS fired Cannon for comments he made during a discussion with former Public Enemy member Richard “Professor Griff” Griffin in an episode of Cannon’s Class. Cannon has apologized several times and brought on Rabbi Abraham Cooper to discuss anti-Semitism. “I’m asking to be corrected from your community. Give me books. Teach me. I’m an empty vessel — an empty broken vessel. Teach me. Fix me,” Cannon told Cooper last month. He also thanked Cooper for his support, knowing that Cooper has also faced backlash. “I made the Jewish community mad,” Cannon said. “I made my community mad by apologizing. We should be allies because of our common oppression.”

As for West, his presidential campaign has been controversial from the start. Throughout this week, multiple reports have been published on his campaign’s connection to Republican operatives, and West appeared to admit that his campaign was meant to take votes from Joe Biden in an interview with Forbes. In Wisconsin, Lane Ruhland, a Republican lawyer who represented President Trump’s campaign in a lawsuit, dropped off West’s signatures to get him on the ballot. In Ohio, West’s campaign included a list of 18 people who would vote for him in the Electoral College, and six people had the same address in Cleveland and four others had the same Lakewood address. On Friday, TMZ reported West might not make the Illinois ballot because 1,928 signatures were ruled invalid, making him short of the 2,500 needed.

West said he is running as a member of the “Birthday Party” and his running mate is Wyoming life coach Michelle Tidball. In an earlier Forbes interview, West said if he wins it’s “everybody’s birthday.” The rapper also said he would run the country like Wakanda, the fictional country in Marvel’s Black Panther, “because it’s the best explanation of what our design group is going to feel like in the White House.”