Kanye West Has Spent $6.8 Million on His Presidential Campaign
The rapper has only made the ballot in 10 states
by Reid Nakamura · TheWrapKanye West has put more than $6.76 million of his own money toward his long-shot presidential bid, according to a report filed with the Federal Election Commission on Friday.
The report shows seven loans from West to his campaign between July 15 and Aug. 31, with the only other income coming in the form of relatively small-dollar donations totaling just under $11,500. The campaign holds $1.2 million in debt owed to consulting firms based out of New Mexico and Arizona.
Meanwhile, the report showed that the campaign has spent about $5.8 million, mostly on consultants.
According to CNN, West has only made the ballot in 10 states, including battleground states Colorado, Iowa and Minnesota. Earlier this week he was removed from the ballot in both Arizona and Virginia, making it mathematically impossible for him to win the White House.
The rapper, who has previously supported president Donald Trump, announced his candidacy in July, later holding an incoherent campaign rally in South Carolina that led some observers to speculate about his mental health.
Multiple reports from CNN, The New York Times and others have suggested that West’s campaign is being “propped up” by Republican political operatives in an effort to skim votes from Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
West, a registered Republican, was confronted by the suggestion that his “Birthday Party” presidential bid is a tactic to aid Trump’s re-election by a Forbes reporter last month, to which the rapper replied, “I’m not going to argue with you. Jesus is King.”
But that's just par for the course for the rapper, who has a long history of stirring things up, politically speaking. Let's review 13 times Kanye West fanned the flames of political strife.
During a televised NBC benefit concert for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, West seemingly went off-script when he angrily called out then-U.S. president George W. Bush for his handling of the unfolding disaster. “George Bush doesn’t care about black people,” the rapper blurted out, leaving his co-presenter, “Shrek” and “Austin Powers” star Mike Myers, looking pretty surprised.NBC
During an appearance on “On Air With Ryan Secrest” Kanye defended his wife Kim Kardashian's fitness to attend the annual Met Gala by dissing then-first lady Michelle Obama's recent appearance on the cover of Vogue. “No one is looking at what [the president] is wearing. Michelle Obama cannot Instagram a [sexy swimsuit] pic like what my girl Instagrammed the other day,” West said on air.Getty Images
Ahead of his Yeezus tour, Ye angered a lot of people when he unveiled tour merch bearing Confederate flags. “The Confederate flag represented slavery in a way,” Kanye West said in an AMP 7.1 interview. “So I took the Confederate flag and made it my flag. It’s my flag now.”Instagram
The rapper's infamous video featured a fully nude digitally recreated Donald Trump (among many other people). Alas, Trump didn't comment on his NSFW portrayal.Tidal
Nearly 11 years after denouncing George W. Bush, Kanye got political again, this time by expressing support for Donald Trump during a 24-minute interlude at the San Jose stop on his Saint Pablo Tour. "He wasn’t even in politics and he won," West told a crowd of confused concertgoers. "That shows you the level of possibility that’s out there," said Yeezy to plenty of boos. Of course, the rapper didn't actually vote that year, he just said he would have voted for Trump if he had voted. Maybe Trump will return the favor if Ye actually ends up running for president in 2024.Getty Images
Not too long after Trump won the election, West met with him at Trump Tower in New York. "We’ve been friends for a long time," the president told members of the press. West stood next to the president in silence only stating, "I just want to take a picture right now."
Kanye turned himself into a meme after he bragged on Twitter about owning a "Make America Great Again" hat signed by President Trump. Ye insisted that he didn't "agree with everything Trump does," but that didn't stop his followers on social media from making a ton of jokes about the "sunken place," a biting reference to Jordan Peele’s hit horror film "Get Out."Twitter
During a surprise appearance on the celebrity gossip show, Kanye made his now-infamous comment that hundreds of years of slavery was "a choice." Shortly after, TMZ producer Charles Latibeaudiere called Kanye "an under-medicated, mentally unstable megalomaniac."TMZ
During a surprise third-musical performance on the "Saturday Night Live" season premiere, Kanye West donned his red MAGA hat. And after the cameras stopped, he ranted in support for President Trump -- to much booing from the crowd. Later on, cast member Kenan Thompson said, "I don’t know if that's the moment necessarily to hold people hostage like that."NBC
Just a couple of days after his "SNL" appearance, Ye tweeted, “We will provide jobs for all who are free from prisons as we abolish the 13th amendment,” attached with a photo of him in a MAGA hat. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States, though many activists oppose its provision that prisoners can be used for unpaid labor.Twitter
West made headlines again with a truly weird visit with Donald Trump at the Oval Office. Though the two were set to discuss prison reform, West told President Trump that wearing his Make America Great Again hat made him "feel like Superman." "You made a superman cape for me," the rapper said.Getty Images
On Oct. 27 at a conservative conference, pro-Trump activist Candace Owens unveiled merch for her self-styled “Blexit” campaign, urging black voters to abandon the Democratic Party. Owens took pains to strongly associate Kanye with the campaign, telling Page Six that he designed the campaign's X-shaped stick figure logo, and stating that the rapper was at the conference "in spirit." But maybe not: Just two days later, Owens clarified in a statement on Twitter that West only designed the logo, and is not otherwise involved in the campaign.
That wasn't the end of it, however...ABC/Blexit
On Oct. 30, West categorically denied any involvement in "Blexit" at all, tweeting, "I introduced Candace to the person who made the logo and they didn’t want their name on it so she used mine. I never wanted any association with Blexit. I have nothing to do with it."
Then in a follow up tweet, Ye renounced politics -- and certain unnamed people -- entirely. "My eyes are now wide open and now realize I've been used to spread messages I don't believe in," he said.
But has Kanye West's political flame-fanning finally come to an end? Only time will tell.Twitter
Chicago rapper renounced politics on Tuesday, saying “I’ve been used to spread messages I don’t believe in”
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