FEC filings reveal Kanye West has spent over $10 million just to do…this
Mr. West recently bragged on a song that he should be addressed as a Presidential candidate from now on — and why shouldn’t he? He’s literally signing himself into the red for it.
If you thought Kanye West wasn’t serious serious about running for President, well, stop reading now.
The entertainment mogul, once a top-billed supporter of President Donald Trump, is going all-in on his independent run for President under his self-created Birthday Party.
How can we tell? Well, there are stringent laws for anyone running for public office, including mandatory financial report filing. For federal office campaigns, those are public one sent through the Federal Election Commission. Kanye’s are out, and well…follow through this depressing series of tweets on it by reporter Ben C. Jacobs.
Yep, you read that right, he only ‘raised’ $2,782. But wait, it’s even more bleak from there:
That means that it’s likely none of Kanye’s rich friends or family (looking at you, Kardashian clan) have contributed to him…unless they wanted to keep it quiet and send less than $200, in which they don’t have to name themselves.
And this dark fantasy isn’t over yet…
Yes. Kanye loaned nearly 10 million dollars to himself (insert “in a pandemic” here). I don’t believe he’s required to pay it back to himself since, y’know, he can forgive himself. Either way, he’s not likely to earn that money back (in the political realm, at least — and surely not as fast as it went out).
So what necessitated $10 million out of the pocketbook? Surely widespread advertising, on-the-ground campaigning, or contacting potential voters you may think.
Well…
Well, what’s come out of that ‘strategy’ and ‘consulting’? Um…
Yeah. A video from Hype Williams’ company, possibly not even involving Hype himself — and if you pain yourself to go to Kanye’s website to watch the video, you would hope Hype never touched this footage. (Kanye’s campaign website, kanye2020.country, is a trip within itself, with nothing but Kanye 2020 merchandise, his 10-point platform, and several donate buttons.)
More from The Renaissance: “Chasing Blanco Billions” — Paul K. Barnes
But to save you a trip over there, the video is 122 seconds of Kanye talking, from an angle straight out of a Mr. Robot episode (see below). His speech on the importance of family and prayer is interceded with footage of people in Christian activities, plus images of younger ‘Ye with his family from previous generations. (See angle below — I’m pretty sure he’s also reading from a teleprompter?)
Ironically odd, as nobody from his ‘chosen family’, you could say — as in his wife, in-laws, and children — are shown. Very telling.
All in all, no matter how much you buy into Kanye’s power and influence, signing away $10 million and not netting one significant donation would be a death sign for any politician, let alone one running for commander-in-chief. It may not hurt him as much as the average person, considering he’s a billionaire in worth after only being worth $30 million in 2014 and $53 million in the red in 2016, but it’s not exactly like he can marry into another billion-dollar family or ask Mark Zuckerberg for another bail out like he did at both of those vantage points, respectively.
It’s possible that his latest song, “Nah Nah Nah”, could start erasing that debt and boosting the campaign. (Look, I said possible. It is 2020.)
We all know Kanye has a propensity for late registrations, but the fact that he has to stress to many potential voters that they have to write him in because he’s not on the ballot may have been the first sign that this was just not a fruitful decision. Granted, the moving goalposts - I mean, laws governing ballot access are typically unfair, but this campaign so far would likely encourage people to make those rules even harder, not easier.
The world will be watching to see how this all plays out. Who knows?
