Kanye West's 2024 Presidential Campaign Has Received Zero Donations, According to Campaign Filings
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Kanye West's informal 2024 campaign for president doesn't appear to be popular with political donors — at least, according to a recent filing, which shows the rapper and designer's campaign brought in zero dollars in 2022.
In a filing submitted Monday and surfaced by The Daily Beast, Kanye 2020 (the current name of West's political action committee) reported spending $142,000 in expenses in the last three months of 2022, but not bringing in any donations that year.
While West hasn't officially declared his candidacy (which requires filing paperwork with the FEC), he did post what appeared to be a campaign video in November. The video posted by West on Twitter has since been deleted, though the rapper and designer posted other videos, as well, including one which displays a "Ye 24" logo, a reference to a presidential run.
That same day, West also posted a video in which he discussed how he had recently dined with former President Donald Trump and far-right activist and white supremacist Nick Fuentes at Trump's private Mar-a-Lago club — a dinner that made headlines after the rapper began to make numerous anti-semitic comments.
According to the campaign filing, West's political committee paid Fuentes — a 24-year-old livestreamer who has been labeled a "white supremacist" by the U.S. Justice Department —$9,026.46 and $5,693.41 in travel reimbursements.
Fuentes made headlines in 2017 for attending the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
In February 2020, his YouTube channel was permanently suspended for violating the company's hate speech policy. He has since continued to spread Holocaust denialist and antisemitic views.
West's political committee also paid Milo Yiannopoulos — an outspoke conservative with far-right, often controversial views who also attended the dinner with Trump — two payments: one for $9,955 and another for $40,000. According to the filing, the payments were for campaign services and a domain transfer. Yiannopoulos previously worked as something of a campaign manager for West but was reportedly fired last month, the Beast reports (he has said he left of his own volition).
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A 2024 campaign would be West's second presidential run.
In 2020, the artist launched his bid for president amid a tumultuous period in his personal life with then-wife Kim Kardashian, and various episodes of erratic behavior. At his only campaign event, he divulged deeply personal details about his family.
He ultimately earned about 60,000 votes in a dozen states.
West, 45, has been mired in controversy in recent months due to several antisemitic remarks, including a tweet in which he said he wanted to go "death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE." Following that comment, dozens of companies — including Adidas — cut ties with the rapper and fashion designer.
But West doubled down on the comments, making an an appearance on the alt-right web show InfoWars during which he praised Adolf Hitler and said Nazis "did good things too; we've got to stop dissing the Nazis all the time."
