Ye (Kanye West) is running for President of the United States. The rapper and fashion designer had been in the news recently following a series of anti-semitic tweets and statements.
While Ye’s official announcement seems to have come on twitter with a video posted with the hashtag #YE24, he first announced on a YouTube video that begins in a parking lot as Ye gets out of a car. Paparazzi are a distance away and there are audible clicks from camera shutters. Kanye beacons a couple of the cameramen over to him and one of the men asks if it’s ok to record and Ye replies that it’s cool. Then Ye tells the cameraman, “come with me,” and he then follows Ye on a journey into a fashion warehouse. Ye sings a song as they walk and the camera trails him.
After Ye finishes singing, he begins saying a prayer, “Father, thank you for bringing us together this morning. Thank you for starting this week off. Thank you for waking up. Thank you for the oxygen. Thank you for the food. Thank you for the clothing. Thank you for the shelter. Thank you for sending your son to die for us. The truth, the way and the light. There is no other help that we know, Yahshua. Christ and your son’s name, amen.”
Then Kanye begins talking to the cameraman that he invited into his workspace, “so what we’re doing is working on training, working developing, going from cotton, to developing the cotton, to developing the clothes. We do a lot of research with military clothing, with Yeezy, Helmut Lang, Ralph Lauren. As you can see, Balenciaga, I really like the cut of the Balenciaga pieces and that’s the reason why we work with them a lot. And then applying it to just be, you know, a uniform.”
Kanye then gestures to indicate what the cameraman is wearing, “Like, this is a uniform, what you’re wearing, it looks super fresh with the grays and everything, and the white sneakers and everything. That’s like just a hood basic right there and to like this jacket that I’m wearing right now, I took like a lot of ideas and mix it together. It’s almost like the PIXAR jackets, like taking a ripstop. Cuz usually if you get a bomber, they do it in this nylon, but we’re using biodegradable fabrics. So everything had to be this dry fabric so it doesn’t create landfills, it goes back into the earth. And then we just kept working on the cut over and over then just put the hoody with it.”
Kanye then models the beige bomber jacket he’s wearing, pulling the hood over his head and his face disappears under the large roomy hood. Kanye then describes his plans for the week, including meetings with civil engineers and theologists to plan the curriculum for his Donda Academy. He says Donda is now the Donda Theology Engineering University.
Ye says, “we need people who have vocational training skill sets. This is the way we bring our country back into power. We have to train our children to be able to bring physical things we need in America right here. You know, we’re not going to talk about what we’re not going to do. We’re only going to focus on what we’re going to do, on what we’re going to do right here in America.”
Then Ye confirms his plan to run for president, “the reason why I’m announcing that I’m running for president is I want the FCC to look at my money.”
Ye continues, “if the FCC was looking at my money, there had been a possibility that Adidas wouldn’t have went into JP Morgan and froze my account and put a 75 million-dollar hold on four different accounts. I went from being a multi-billionaire to not be able to use my Apple Pay. Four nights ago, I couldn’t use my Apple pay because somehow Adidas was able to legally go in and freeze my money. And when I see this, I think, ‘well if this could happen to me, this could happen to other Americans.’ And for what? You know this can happen to an American that didn’t even steal anything, that didn’t even hurt anyone.
This could just happen to you for saying the wrong idea out loud, for expressing yourself, for expressing frustration. How many of you guys have been at a job and you’re frustrated with a manager or a situation and you didn’t want to say anything because you didn’t want to go back to your dad? You might be taking care of your dad, you know what I’m saying, he might be elderly and this person at your job can treat you a certain way cuz you’re not going to lose that position cuz you know you got to take care of your dad. So you deal with a lot of things. You know, you saw what Adidas is trying to do, they showed you the reason why—I put in the termination notice to Adidas originally a couple of months back—as they were trying to steal my company from me and steal my designs. They hired my lawyer, they paid the lawyer.”
Ye continues, “they paid this lawyer to sign off my IP—North, Saint, Chicago, Psalm’s IP—to Adidas. This is a major company doing this to a major person in front of everyone. So what happens behind closed doors? If that can happen to Ye, what can happen to you—to your grandparents, to your parents, to your children, to your cousin, your nieces, your nephews?”
“This is the reason why Jesus has to sit at the throne and in this Christian company, this Christian country. That’s a Freudian slip because we are the youngest startup in history. You know, America, this is a Christian country that has to be ran with strong Christian values, not this cafeteria pick and choose what you want. You know what I’m saying? Like let’s take the topic of Life. Yes I’m about life, I’m about life because what’s the opposite of life? Does anyone know what the opposite of life is?” The cameraman chimes in and answers, “death.”
“I am very much about life,” Ye says, “I am not about death. It’s promised, but that’s in God’s hands. But we need opportunities, we need to be able to give choices because people are afraid to bring people into this world. We feel like we don’t have the resources to be able to bring children into this world nowadays, but there’s more than enough resources for people to be happy in this world. And as Americans we have to show we had a vision of the future in the 60s and all these inventors were pushing this vision and somehow we started to just go into a loop.
With this vision we can create platforms that make people feel like it’s okay to bring a child into this world. So I asked the future head of state, this is my perspective on life, give opportunities for more life. Like my man Drake says, ‘more life.’ Give opportunities for more life, this is the thing, you can’t get so much on takin’ away opportunities until you give other opportunities. And me, I realize that I am a strong Christian leader and father and inventor and a visionary and I realize you can’t tell someone don’t eat this food that’s killing you without giving them another plate of food. We’ve got to show them that it’s something better.”
Ye continues, “I am the son of Raymond West and Dr. Donda West. I am the offspring. I’m 45-years-old and it’s time to step into the role, to my bloodline, these educators. Anybody, ask anybody that had my mom as a teacher how much she inspired them, how much they loved her. That very love is what we have to give. People of all walks of life come up to me, they come to me at the hotel, they come to me in the streets and sometimes they’re hurt by ideas, things that I’ve said that people won’t say outloud and I just give him a hug and then they start to say to me ‘hey, the very things that you said and what you’re talkin’ about is actually being proven by the way you’re being treated.’ And you know, I just want to give.”
Ye goes on to describe his work in design and fashion and how it has impressed big corporations and other designers alike. However, he thinks designer items are way too expensive, and people do desperate things to get the money to pay for these luxury items. “I know that you guys in the design world see what we’re doing. So at Adidas, what you’re doing with the price points with the Demna collaboration and Balenciaga collaboration, it’s not right. It’s $1,000 it’s $2,000. You have Demna in a golden cage.”
Ye says Adidas took what the Demna designer was doing, “and put it inside of a $2,000 box, so it’s only for the rich people. That mentality is played out, it’s a dinosaur mentality and it’s only a matter of time ’til we get hit with an iceberg. We have to raise our consciousness. And how do we have people scamming, selling dope, selling messages of death in order to buy a jacket for $5,000, $6,000? And take all the celebrities and we push that. I’m not pointing fingers, cuz I was doing the same thing until God brought me down to a place where I can really serve him. Because if I’m sitting on any kind of high throne that he didn’t give, then I’m not in full service to him. All of the things that got taken away from me, I’m so thankful for that because I get to serve God better.”
Ye previously ran for president in 2020. He conceded his loss in a tweet, saying “WELP KANYE 2024.”
Despite the way Ye and Adidas parted their ways and his sore feelings over his money being frozen and his IP being taken, he still stands by the designs they collaborated on and thinks they are still good.
Kanye does not think the folks at Adidas will have the best Christmas, but he’s planning on spending time with family and eating lots of good meals.
Ye says hopefully “this can heal some of the bleeding. Also, I know another thing is, for everyone in contracts, I know that this will never happen again in history. There will never be a situation where people end a multibillion-dollar deal off of a tweet, gotcha—gotcha—so I would like to thank everyone that was involved with this negotiation. Thank God no one was hurt in the process and I feel freeeeee!”
At a recent meeting, Ye asked former President Donald Trump to be his running mate and Trump was not fond of the idea of being Vice President. Ye said Trump started, “basically screaming at me at the table, telling me I was gonna lose. I mean, has that ever worked for anyone in history? Telling Ye that I’m gonna lose? I’m like well hold on, hold on, hold on, Trump, you’re talkin’ to Ye.”
Image of Kanye from screenshot of X17onlineVideo