Time.news – Kanye West tries again. After the flop in 2020, the African-American rapper wants to run for president in 2024. The 45-year-old artist and producer, who has legally changed his name to Ye, posted a video on social media with the new logo that will accompany him in the electoral campaign : “Ye 24”. But in keeping with the character, who is attracting controversy and accusations for his anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories, the rapper also revealed that he had asked Donald Trump, during a visit to Mar-a-Lago, Florida, if you want to be his vice president.
#YE24 pic.twitter.com/OR60id12oS
— ye (@kanyewest) November 25, 2022
The tycoon would have reacted by screaming: he didn’t like the idea of becoming someone else’s deputy commander in chief. In a video titled “Mar-a-Lago Debrief,” West said: “Trump basically started yelling, telling me I’m going to lose“. “And I – he added – had the reaction like, ‘hey, Trump, calm down, you’re talking to Ye’. Two years ago West had just won 70,000 votes, but this disastrous experience hasn’t discouraged him.
The launch of the candidacy comes on the heels of a controversial period for West: in early October, the rapper sparked controversy when he attended Paris Fashion Week wearing a T-shirt that read “White Lives Matter”, frase adopted by white supremacists in response to Black Lives Matter used by African Americans.
The rapper then responded, calling his accusers people paid by Jews. In a television interview, the producer relaunched his anti-Semitic comments, causing the breakdown of commercial collaborations with sportswear and fashion giants such as Gap, Adidas and Balenciaga. West revealed that he lost “two billion dollars in just one day”.
Compared to two years ago, the rapper has at least decided to move ahead. In 2020 he had announced his descent into the field too late. In the end he had only given one rally, which ended surreally with him in tears talking about abortion like an evangelical preacher. A candidate in only twelve states, his election had been a historic flop.
Now he seems determined to take things seriously: he will also count on a director of the electoral campaign, Milo Yiannopoulos, a former right-wing English journalist, famous for his offensive comments against Muslims and women, a former collaborator of the Congress representative, the Republican and conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene.