When footage emerged of Kanye West's "publicist" threatening an election worker after Trump's 2020 election defeat, it was a reminder that Kanye himself had launched his own presidential campaign. Why were his people still batting for Trump? The cynical answer is that Kanye's presidential campaign was merely a stalking horse for Trump, its only purpose to peel black votes away from Joe Biden. The cynical answer was the correct one: newly-released documents show that Republican Party insiders financed and operated Kanye's campaign.
New documents show Kanye West's doomed White House campaign—styled as an "independent" third-party effort—appears to have disguised potentially millions of dollars in services it received from a secretive network of Republican Party operatives, including advisers to the GOP elite and a managing partner at one of the top conservative political firms in the country.
Potentially even more alarming? The Kanye 2020 campaign committee did not even report paying some of these advisers, and used an odd abbreviation for another—moves which campaign finance experts say appear designed to mask the association between known GOP operatives and the campaign, and could constitute a violation of federal laws.
Kanye's personal problems and his diagnosis mean he is a vulnerable person. The menacing pseudo-cop speech patterns of his "publicist" was cult talk and her behavior implied that he was surrounded by similar minders. This isn't to say that Kanye isn't responsible for the things he does or says, but it does suggest that his involvement in the campaign was as cursory as the campaign itself.