Within the first five minutes of Kanye West’s appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, West tells Rogan, “I believe my calling is to be the leader of the free world,†meaning the president of the United States, and that the calling was given to him by God. Rogan responds, “What does that mean, to you? Does that mean you have a plan that’s different that’s been implemented before? What would you do if you were the leader of the free world? What would be different about the way you would handle things? If that’s your plan, what is it about that that is your calling?†What Rogan is asking is, essentially: What’s your platform?
West proceeds to speak mostly uninterrupted for the nearly three-hour length of the episode, but does not clearly lay out a presidential platform. West does talk about some other plans, though, which include “building a monastery that will then be the future of monasteries,†founding a “gospel university†that will seat 100,000 people in an arena and train them “like Russian swimmers†to recite his hymns, and his outlines for a sustainable community that will harness the four elements to produce power, but that won’t use solar, because of something about Tesla vs. Edison. Don’t call any of these thoughts tangents, though; West says when he speaks, it’s a “symphony of ideas.†Some other things he references before he gets to policy: the sinking of the Titanic, the inventor of the keyboard, whether or not Brandon Lee’s death was a murder conspiracy, Edna Mode from The Incredibles, the Disney movie Maleficent, the Disney movie Tron, and the scene where Jim Carrey is under the table in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. After all of this, a little over halfway through the interview, West reveals that he is flying to Atlanta multiple times a week, where he is building a soundstage. Despite whatever may be in the works for that soundstage, West admits, “I go back and forth on content. Should I work in content?†It’s the most relatable thing he’s ever said.