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see candace o

The rapper formerly known as Kanye West took out an ad expressing his hope to get better. 1 26 FUENTES TATE SING SONG CLUB

see sharon holtman

see lady ruby freeman

celebs limosine liberals left coast elite, take on cause eg animal rights, once major target of right.  But Kanye and Kim are amplifier/spotlight

no clear connection to campaign? wanna-be ideol entre do it on spec?  / roger stone atwater ratfucking?

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AN 8 26

The far-right activist known for being among the first to be removed from Twitter is now in ICE custody, TMZ reported on Friday.

Provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was snatched by ICE in Louisiana and is currently being held in a detention center there, inmate records show. TMZ said that the circumstances are not clear, but he was detained at an airport.

Yiannopoulos worked for Kanye West as his "chief of staff," until the two parted ways in 2024. He was also part of the Ye24 campaign and served as director for political operations.

West is scheduled to perform on Friday night in New Orleans.

TMZ recalled that one of the more recent Yiannopoulos scandals was when he accused West's dentist of supplying the rapper with nitrous oxide for recreational use. The dentist denied the allegations.

Yiannopoulos is from the U.K., and not an American citizen. He has been a far-right media personality for years and has become prominent through the Gamergate controversies. He wrote for Breitbart News and drew attention with his deliberately confrontational online persona. He marketed himself as a gay conservative opponent of feminism, Islam, “political correctness” and social-justice movements, but critics say his public career relied on inflammatory attacks and harassment of marginalized groups.

Twitter permanently suspended Yiannopoulos in July 2016 after actress Leslie Jones received a torrent of racist and sexist abuse following his posts about her "Ghostbusters" reboot. Twitter said he had violated its rules against “inciting or engaging in targeted abuse or harassment," though he denied responsibility and called the ban censorship. His account was later reinstated under Elon Musk’s ownership, NPR reported.

Opposition to him also stems from other controversies, including past statements appearing to defend sexual relationships between adults and underage boys. The fallout cost him his Breitbart job, a planned CPAC appearance and a book contract in 2017, KERA News recalled.

In late 2022, West introduced the far-right provocateur as his campaign manager and adviser. Yiannopoulos later said he helped arrange the infamous Mar-a-Lago dinner between Donald Trump and West, in which white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes also appeared.

Infighting in the West universe ultimately drove Yiannopoulos out. The West campaign’s treasurer later resigned and alleged that Yiannopoulos submitted potentially falsified invoices and engaged in improper campaign transactions. Yiannopoulos denied any wrongdoing. The association between West and Yiannopoulos added to the controversy surrounding both men, as it combined already inflammatory public conduct with Yiannopoulos’s record of far-right activism and online provocation.

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AN 1 26

The Miami New Times reports Miami venue moguls gave MAGA influencer Clavicular [Braden Peters] a dressing down after he and far-right “manosphere” influencers Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes, Myron Gaines, and Sneako celebrated and sang Kanye West’s “Heil Hitler” at a Miami Beach club.

“They're not really going for subtlety here,” said Bulwark podcaster Tim Miller while reviewing the widely spread video of the event. “You can see, I think that's Gaines … just doing the full Nazi salute over and over again while they're videoing themselves [in a van]. Nick Fuentes is in the back looking a little uncomfortable and chuckling.”

Later the group took a table at a club, Vendôme, where they prodded the DJ to play more Kanye so they could do more Nazi salutes, sing and party.

After the video went live, Vendôme released a statement calling the video content and imagery “deeply offensive and unacceptable” and claiming “Vendôme and our hospitality group do not condone anti-Semitism, hate speech, or prejudice of any kind.”

“In the days following the incident, the 20-year-old ‘looksmaxxing’ influencer Clavicular, who frequently uses the N-word and wears a hat with the N-word written on it, said that he would not apologize for what he did,” reports the Times. “He maintained that ‘it’s just a song.’ A week ago, he streamed himself in his Sprinter van dancing to ‘Heil Hitler.’”

“You can ban me from clubs, you can s-—— talk me on Instagram, but I’m not sorry about any of it,” the Times reports Clavicular saying on a livestream. “Not at all. Not even a little bit. F——the clubs. I would rather have free speech and the ability to make jokes and do content a thousand times over rather than being a little b—— who you know has to censor himself and do all that sh—— because if that’s what’s required to go into these dogs hit Miami clubs, keep me the f—— out.”

“However, it appears the ongoing bans hit a breaking point for the 20-year-old influencer,” the Times reported. “As he continued having difficulty partying in Miami, Clavicular sat down with Grutman and Papi Steak owner David Einhorn earlier this week.”

On his Kick livestream on Tuesday, the Times reports Clavicular says he’s no longer doing politics.

“I just said, ‘Look, I’m not trying to do politics anymore, and I would never want to be associated with politics,” said Clavicular, recounting his conversation with Grutman. “… I was like, ‘ Yeah, bro, of course. I’m here to mog. I’m here to lookmaxx. I’m not political whatsoever.'”

He later posted a photo of himself sitting at a table with the club owners on Instagram with the caption: “No more politics, just mogging #kingsofmiami @davidgrutman @davideinhorn.”

There’s no telling whether the tension is gone, however, report the Times.

“He has yet to publicly apologize, only claiming that he is not political. Meanwhile, he continues to say the N-word,” the Times said.

Read the Miami New Times report at this link.

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RWW

01/27/2026

by

Kyle Mantyla

The president and his administration are once again dismissing the Constitution to score political points.

Gun ownership advocates are pushing back against the Trump administration over its response to the killing of Alex Pretti on Saturday.

A baby-step back from the brink.

Remarkably similar scenes from Boston and Minneapolis, 260 years apart, show a federal government betraying its founding principles.

The rapper formerly known as Kanye West took out an ad expressing his hope to get better.

There might be consequences to accusing people of abetting murder . . . maybe.

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RWW

1 26

Nick Fuentes unleashed an antisemitic rant in response to the controversy that erupted after he and several other far-right figures danced to Kanye West's "Heil Hitler" in a Miami Beach night club: "We do not care about the Holocaust!"

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RWW

02/10/2025

by

Kyle Mantyla

There’s little about the White House’s hiring practices that appear normal. For example, asking applicants, "Was Jan. 6 an inside job?” is ludicrous.

Musk and Trump say they promote free speech. They seem to only defend racist speech.

Collecting donors, voters, TikTok viewers and high-powered friends on his way into Trump’s inner circle.

Recently, Montana state Rep. Lukas Schubert took to X to warn that “South Africa stands as a reminder of what’s to come in America” if Democrats “implement their explicit anti-white discrimination policies.” But Schubert has spread other far-right, racist talking points on X, including the claim that diversity as a “code word” for “anti-white.”

Kanye West made a Super Bowl ad on his phone to promote a website he’s currently using to sell t-shirts with swastikas on them.

Usually, when Republicans want to push Christian Nationalist legislation, it’s through bills promoting the Ten Commandments in schools under the guise of “history and tradition” or attacking LGBTQ people using the rationale that they violate God’s preferences as expressed in the Bible. But sometimes they just take the hoods off and dispense with even trying to come up with a secular-sounding justification for their religious agenda.

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10 24 rww

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September 10, 2024 5:10 pm

Ohio Senator JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate, said Monday that if he were in former Vice President Mike Pence’s place, he would not have certified the election on January 6, 2021.

It’s been a surreal experience for Dorsainvil, but Vance’s tweet seized on a conspiracy theory that has been bouncing around the right-wing echo chamber. The core allegation that Haitians in Springfield had “abducted and eaten” pets followed a meandering path, from local Facebook groups to the online, right-wing influencers that Vance follows, and onwards to the current vice presidential candidate. It’s an example of the engine that drives modern right-wing politics: wild and false claims start off scattered across the internet, before being vacuumed up and boosted to mass audiences, sometimes by high-profile politicians whose status as public figures lends credence to what, only days before, had been random, unverified posts.

On Saturday, Holocaust denier and Nazi sympathizer Stew Peters claimed that he had been denied entry at an event hosted by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. In a post on his X account, Peters wrote that he was “BANNED from entry to a ticketed VIP event” in Salt Lake City, UT which was part of Carlson’s ongoing “Live Tour.”

The connection between Republican voters and their leaders was never primarily about abortion. Rather, as Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) transformation of the party reveals, Trump’s bond with his supporters is forged from different material: namely, his militant mission to return power to white Christian America.

Donald Trump is probably fuming about this interview with former Project 2025 director Paul Dans.

Lawfair, founded by the well-known litigator Adam Mortara, is a boutique right-wing firm currently engaged by the state of Tennessee to provide counsel on a contentious Supreme Court case that could affect the availability of gender-affirming care for transgender minors across the country. Aside from Mortara, the only other lawyer known to have worked or done work for the firm is a project-based contract attorney named Christopher Roach. He no longer does so, after WIRED asked questions about his apparent ties—revealed exclusively in this story for the first time—to online accounts with a long history of posting white supremacist and antisemitic content.

Candace Owens announced on X Monday that she was suspended from YouTube for a week following her recent interview with anti-Semitic rapper Kanye West, which YouTube said platformed anti-Semitic claims that “Jewish people control the media.”

While swing state Republican officials, former Republican National Committee leaders and strategists are ringing alarm bells over the party’s lackluster get-out-the-vote effort, some pro-Trump organizers suggest that the GOP ground game is successfully targeting voters at the margins.

In 2016, he tried to stop Trump from becoming president. By 2020, he was trying to help Trump overturn the election. Now he could become Trump’s attorney general.

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Taylor Swift allegedly got Kanye West ‘kicked out’ of Super Bowl seats - Alternet.org

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Kanye West to Jewish Adidas employee: 'Kiss a picture of Hitler every day' - Alternet.org

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an 8 23 no lnx

Feds to MTG: Tell us more about that anti-Islam, Nazi-adjacent provocateur who used your credit card

Alexandria Jacobson

andRaw Story

August 18, 2023

This article was paid for by AlterNet subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

The Federal Election Commission has questions for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) about a credit card charge that ties her congressional campaign to far-right agitator Milo Yiannopoulos and and rapper Kanye West.

Greene’s congressional campaign committee received a letter from the FEC on Tuesday asking for “information essential to full public disclosure of your federal election campaign finances” regarding reimbursement of $7,020.16 that was labeled as “use of campaign credit card for personal expense.”

Let’s back up.

Last month, Raw Story reported on the receipt, which appeared on a financial disclosure submitted to federal regulators by Greene for Congress.

Seemingly, the receipt was reimbursement for Yiannopoulos’ use of the Greene campaign’s credit card in November to purchase a campaign website domain for the yet-to-be-launched 2024 presidential campaign of West.

RELATED ARTICLE: Milo Yiannopoulos settles up with Marjorie Taylor Greene for Kanye West website scandal

Yiannopoulos, who is known for online harassment and making bigoted and controversial statements, including comments seemingly defending pedophilia, worked for Greene as an unpaid intern in 2022, Insider reported.

The reimbursement amount matches the GoDaddy expense on Nov. 22, 2022, for “domain registration and hosting” that Greene previously reported, according to The Daily Beast.

Yiannopoulos’ initial transaction was for the purchase of ye24.com and occurred on the same day that West, who now goes by Ye, dined with former President Donald Trump and white nationalist Nick Fuentes, The Daily Beast reported.

Shortly afterward, West and Fuentes, a Holocaust denier, appeared together on right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ show where West made anti-Semitic comments praising Hitler and Nazis, Politico reported.

West reportedly fired Yiannopoulos, who took credit for setting up the dinner at Mar-a-Lago, in December but rehired him as “director of political operations” in May, according to The Daily Beast.

West ran for president in 2020 but hasn’t officially announced a 2024 run.

The FEC’s request for additional information addressed to Greene’s treasurer, Jason Boles, said, “This receipt appears to be related to an apparent unauthorized use of Committee funds. The Commission notes your explanation of the unauthorized activity. Although the Commission may take further legal action regarding this apparent improper use of Committee funds, any further clarifying information that you can provide will be taken into consideration.”

Boles did not respond to Raw Story’s request for comment at the time of publication.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/white-nationalism/misogynistic-manosphere-influencers-dive-headfirst-antisemitism

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Misogynistic manosphere influencers dive headfirst into antisemitism

Antifeminist media figures are pushing neo-Nazi rhetoric and spreading conspiracy theories about Jewish people

WRITTEN BY JUSTIN HOROWITZ

PUBLISHED 08/08/23

Content warning: This article contains examples of extremely antisemitic and violent language.

Several misogynistic manosphere influencers are making antisemitic comments and pushing conspiracy theories about Jewish people on podcasts and online.

The manosphereis an online community of websites, bloggers, and influencers cultivating a worldview based on outdated, extremist gender politics repackaged for the internet age. The community valorizes pick-up artists, violent misogynists, incels, men’s rights activists, and conservative cultural critics. 

While purporting to provide dating, financial, and lifestyle advice to men, some manosphere figures are aligning themselves with far-right personalities. Their programs serve as gateways to push audiences further to the right toward more dangerous ideologies.

Fresh & Fit podcast 

The misogynistic Fresh & Fit podcast, hosted by Why Women Deserve Less author Myron Gaines (real name Amrou Fudl) and dating and lifestyle coach Walter Weekes, describes itself as “the #1 men’s podcast in the world.”The podcast recently hosted Holocaust-denying white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who appeared multiple times and made numerous antisemitic comments. During livestreams, he and white nationalist ally Sneako — another guest — denied the Holocaust, justified Nazi book-burnings, and claimed that transgender identities are the result of Jewish conspiracies. 

Two Fresh & Fit videos featuring Fuentes have over 1 million views on Rumble, and Fuentes has gloated about his impact on the show’s viewership.

Nick Fresh n Fit

CitationScreenshot from Nick Fuentes' Telegram account

During one of the streams,Gaines bragged, “We’re the biggest platform that’s talking about the JQ. No one else will do it.” (The “JQ” refers to the “Jewish Question,” an antisemitic framework meant to question the human rights of Jewish people. It provided the pretext for the Holocaust.)

Video

CitationFrom the July 10, 2023, edition of the Fresh and Fit podcast

In another livestream, Gaines again bragged about discussing the “JQ” on his show.

“It’s JQ time,” Gaines said. “Everybody else is too much of a bitch to have this conversation. You can’t have this conversation on no major podcast.”

Video

Citation From the July 7, 2023, edition of Fresh & Fit, streamed on Rumble

During one of the podcast’s panel discussions,Gaines praised and defended Adolf Hitler. 

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“Though he did things that were morally incorrect, he definitely did a bunch of things correct for his country. That’s a fact,” Gaines said.

Video

Citation From the July 7, 2023, edition of Fresh & Fit After Hours, streamed on Rumble

The two hosts sometimes play a cash register sound effect when talking about Jewish people on their show, a familiar antisemitic gag.

Additionally, Gaines dressed up as a stereotypical caricature of a Jewish person during one of his livestreams with Fuentes.

Fresh n Fit Jewish gag

CitationScreenshot from the July 7, 2023 edition of Fresh & Fit After Hours, streamed on Rumble

A video of Fuentes and several women giving the Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute on the set of the podcast circulated online.

Video

CitationVideo via r/MarchAgainstNazis Reddit page

The two Fresh & Fit hosts have repeatedly hosted9/11 truther andHolocaust denier Ryan Dawsonto push antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish people being involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. 

During an episode titled “Ryan Dawson REVEALS 9/11 Coverup By US Intel Agencies, Saudis & Israel! (PART 1),” Gaines pushed a debunked antisemitic conspiracy theory about Israelis being involved in 9/11.

Video

CitationFrom the May 5, 2023, edition of Fresh & Fit, streamed on Rumble

Hannah Pearl Davis

Antifeminist influencer and podcaster Hannah Pearl Davis has also recently pushed antisemitism online in a since-deleted song titled “Why can’t we talk about the Jews?”

“Why can’t we talk about the — without being kicked off of YouTube,” Davis sang. “Now, I’m not saying Hitler was a good guy, but I kind of want to know why.”

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“Now, there’s all these conspiracy theories, and the more they talk I think maybe they’re right,” Davis continued. “But I can’t even listen to the convo, I can’t even have the conversation, without being canceled by the left and the right.”

Fuentes celebrated Davis’ song, saying, “We love you, Pearl.” He has previously appeared on Davis’ dating talk and debate show.

Davis attempted to walk back her comments during an appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored, saying the song “was more about cancel culture.” She later added, “I’m a fan of conspiracy theories.”

Sneako

White nationalist ally, manosphere influencer, and former associate of the rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West) Sneako (real name Nico Kenn De Balinthazy) has made several antisemitic comments online and in interviews.

Sneako has been described as “a cheap imitation of [Andrew] Tate” and rose to prominence on YouTube for his gaming, motivational, and man-on-the-street interview videos. He later shifted toward making misogynistic and hateful content.

Sneako has defended Hitler in the past and attacked Jewish people online.

“Jews have the ultimate power,” Sneako said during an interview with No Jumper’s Adam Grandmaison. “That’s just true, they have ultimate control and power and they will abuse it if they need to protect their agenda.”

“In every single industry, if you look at the end of the rabbit hole, it’s always a Jew who controls it,” Sneako said.

“The label owners, the real estate owners, like, all the people with the most amount of money behind the scene is a Jewish guy,” he continued. “Why are we out here slaving away for Jews who are profiting off of us killing each other?”

Video

CitationFrom the October 19, 2022, edition of No Jumper, uploaded on YouTube

Sneako has also said that “the Nazis had drip” and that the swastika is “aesthetically pleasing.”

Video

CitationFrom a Sneako livestream

Jon Zherka

Self-proclaimed woman-hater and manosphere influencer Jon Zherka has made several antisemitic comments.

In podcasts and on Twitter, Zherka has frequently mocked and attacked Jewish people.

During an appearance on Fresh & Fit, Zherka described Jewish men as “extremely unattractive.”

“We Catholics fuck your Jew women,” Zherka continued. “They’re a little short. Your people are short and they fuck a wall.”

Video

CitationFrom the July 12, 2023, edition of Fresh & Fit After Hours

In a bizarre livestream video posted to Reddit, Zherka melted down after finding out a woman he was with is Jewish. “You rule the world and all the banking,” he said to the woman while pretending to hit her.

After the woman said “I don’t like Hitler,” Zherka asked, “The fuck is wrong with you?” He later added, “I’ll regret this, dude.”

Zherka ended the livestream saying, “Hitler was a good guy.”

Video

CitationFrom a Jon Zherka livestream, uploaded to Reddit

Reporting shows how easily toxic rhetoric can infiltrate the minds of young audiences, even among users as young as 11 years old. Parents in particular should be aware of the dangers these figures pose. Additionally, this misogynistic and antisemitic rhetoric does not live in a vacuum online; it can lead to real-world violence, threats, and harassment.

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mma 7 23

fox News repeatedly hosts white nationalist-approved “Student for Ye” organizer

Daniel Schmidt: “We are entering straight up anti-white genocidal rhetoric”

WRITTEN BY JUSTIN HOROWITZ

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM PAYTON ARMSTRONG

PUBLISHED 07/17/23 4:45 PM EDT

Fox News has repeatedly invited right-wing writer and former “Students for Ye” organizer Daniel Schmidt on its platform to complain about “anti-white hatred” on college campuses.

Schmidt, a University of Chicago student, gained media attention in 2022 for launching an online campaign targeting a professor who was planning to teach a class titled “The Problem of Whiteness” at the university. The professor reportedly received violent threats following Schmidt’s crusade to get the class taken off the roster.

On July 13, Schmidt appeared in a Fox News interview to discuss stories from CNN and The New York Times recounting his harassment campaign.

A week later, Schmidt appeared on Fox Business’ Varney & Co. to discuss the class and the media response.

During the interview, Schmidt described the class as “clear-cut anti-white hatred,” complained that “it just shows the double treatment — the second-class treatment of white people,” and suggested that “we are entering straight up anti-white genocidal rhetoric."

[vid]

schmidt formerly organized “Students for Ye,” a grassroots group created to support rapper Ye’s (formerly Kanye West) potential campaign for president following the musician's unhinged pro-Nazi rants during which he denied the Holocaust and praised Nazis and Adolf Hitler.

Schmidt has also made antisemitic remarks on Twitter. Additionally, white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes has repeatedly applauded Schmidt for his far-right commentary, describing him as a “patriot.” Other white nationalists, including Kevin MacDonald and Peter Brimelow, have praised Schmidt's activism. ...

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Exclusive: Milo Yiannopoulos settles up with Marjorie Taylor Greene for Kanye West website scandal

Alexandria Jacobson

andRaw Story

July 16, 2023

Scandal-ridden far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos has seemingly settled up — financially — with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).

Yiannopoulos reimbursed Greene’s campaign $7,020.16 on May 12 for “use of campaign credit card for personal use,” according to a new Federal Election Commission filing reviewed by Raw Story.

In November, Yiannopoulos had purchased a campaign website domain for Kanye West’s yet-to-be-launched 2024 presidential domain using Greene’s campaign credit card.

Yiannopoulos, who is known for online harassment and making bigoted and controversial statements, including comments seemingly defending pedophilia, worked for Greene as an unpaid intern in 2022, Insider reported.

The reimbursement amount matches the GoDaddy expense on Nov. 22, 2022, for “domain registration and hosting” that Greene previously reported, according to The Daily Beast.

Yiannopoulos’ initial transaction was for the purchase of ye24.com and occurred on the same day that West, who now goes by Ye, dined with former President Donald Trump and white nationalist Nick Fuentes, The Daily Beast reported.

Shortly afterward, West and Fuentes, a Holocaust denier, appeared together on right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s show where West made anti-Semitic comments praising Hitler and Nazis, Politico reported.

West reportedly fired Yiannopoulos, who took credit for setting up the dinner at Mar-a-Lago, in December but rehired him as “director of political operations” in May, according to The Daily Beast. West ran for president in 2020 but hasn’t officially announced a 2024 run.

Greene’s campaign and congressional office did not respond to Raw Story’s requests for comment by publication time.

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Report

https://boingboing.net/2023/05/10/milo-yiannopoulous-may-have-scammed-marjorie-taylor-greene-and-kanye-west.html

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fuentes?

https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/kanye-west-2659984240/

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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/1/2150638/-Fuentes-association-with-Kanye-is-paying-off-nicely-for-Groypers-though-not-so-much-for-West

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Alexander—the far-right leader of the so-called “Stop the Steal” campaign—had his Twitter account restored Monday.

Alexander’s account had been banned just days after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. A spokesperson for Twitter told Newsweek that his account was permanently suspended for violating rules on banning evasion.

But under Elon Musk’s leadership, Twitter has restored Alexander’s account. Many of the tweets including disinformation regarding the 2020 election remain on his account’s timeline at the time of writing.

Alexander and other “Stop the Steal” activists largely organized their campaign to keep then President Trump in power on the social media platform. They spread disinformation, claiming that voter fraud had stolen the election from Trump, and increasingly called for physical—and sometimes violent—action. That culminated on Jan. 6.

On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump loyalists stormed the U.S. Capitol. As they broke down police barriers, battled police, and stormed up the Capitol steps, Alexander surveyed the scene from a terrace overlooking the Capitol.

“I don’t disavow this. I do not denounce this,” he said, pointing to the insurrectionists, in a video posted to Twitter and first reported by Right Wing Watch.

Claiming that the attack was “completely peaceful” and that he did not endorse the “couple of agitators,” Alexander went on to call for rebellion. “Stop the Steal,” he said, “is going to be the home of the rebellion against an illegitimate government.”

he day before, Alexander had organized a “Stop the Steal” rally outside of the White House. Alexander led chants of “Victory or death!” while other speakers called for civil war and revolution.

And according to the Daily Beast, on Dec. 30, 2020, he took to Twitter and said that if Congress certified the 2020 election, “everyone can guess what me and 500,000 others will do to that building. … 1776 is *always* an option.”

After the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Alexander was banned from a host of platforms. He moved his incessant Twitter posts and disinformation campaign to Telegram, where he’s been unable to recreate the sizeable following he had on Twitter. But he hasn’t let up on the extremism.

In just the past few months, Alexander has called for Republicans to “jail Democrats,” telling Jan. 6 insurrectionist Tim Gionet, “We’ve got to make them hurt.”

He also made his stance on democratic elections very clear, stating in a video, “Any election I don’t like is stolen. … If I don’t like it, it’s stolen. If I like it, it’s not stolen. If you win, it’s stolen.”

And when the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack shut down without Alexander facing any charges stemming from the insurrection, Alexander bragged that he had “raped the January 6 Select Committee.” In a rant, he claimed to have beaten the Jan. 6 committee by being a time traveler, and compared himself to Jesus.

In a voice message to his supporters on Telegram Monday, he said that he’d eventually tweet today. He later posted that his account “will be dedicated to Jesus Christ, Love, @J6Families, YE, and beating up naughty Republicans.”

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https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-gave-interview-college-student-now-student-organizing-students-ye

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Tucker Carlson gave an interview to a college student. Now, that student is organizing “Students for Ye,” a group promoted by white nationalists

WRITTEN BY JUSTIN HOROWITZ

PUBLISHED 12/15/22

In July, Fox News host Tucker Carlson gave an interview to college student and right-wing writer Daniel Schmidt. Now, Schmidt is organizing “Students for Ye,” a grassroots group created to support rapper Ye’s (formerly Kanye West) potential campaign for president. The group is being promoted by notorious white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.

Ye has recently went on unhinged pro-Nazi rants on right-wing media, during which he has denied the Holocaust and praised Nazis and Adolf Hitler.

Schmidt hosted a “students for Ye” Twitter space on December 14.

Students for ye twitter space

CitationScreenshot via the @RealDSchmidt Twitter account

Fuentes, who is reportedly working for Ye, promoted the group on his Telegram account:

Fuentes Students for Ye

CitationScreenshot via Nick Fuentes' Telegram channel

“Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander, who has made antisemitic comments, also praised Schmidt’s work.

Additionally, “Students for Ye” is recruiting students to volunteer on social media, including Instagram, Twitter, Telegram, and Fuentes’ streaming platform Cozy.tv.

It’s unclear why Carlson gave an interview to a college student in July. Based on reporting and available tweets, the interview covered some strange topics, including, but not limited to: dropping out of college, attacking feminism, porn, OnlyFans, the struggles of white men, “anti-white sentiment,” and having children. 

In one segment of the interview, Carlson gave Schmidt bizarre life advice about dating, marriage, and sex.

“This whole idea that like, you know, banging 40 people in your 20s is like, a net positive, or something? It’s like not even that fun,” Carlson told Schmidt.

VideoCitationFrom the July 24, 2022, edition of Piece of Schmidt

According to a Crooks and Liars report from July, Schmidt's LinkedIn page indicates he has “written for some right-wing sites, including the Daily Wire, Epoch Times, and The Daily Caller.”The Daily Caller, founded by Tucker Carlson, has a history of publishing white supremacists, anti-Semites, and bigots.

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Rapper Ye goes on an unhinged antisemitic rant on Infowars

12/01/22

Rapper Ye turns his Twitter account over to banned white nationalists, conspiracy theorists, and January 6 collaborators

12/01/22

YouTuber Tim Pool praises neo-Nazi ally Milo Yiannopoulos and rapper Ye

11/29/22

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canceled [heh] in intr of both

https://www.alternet.org/2022/12/parler-termination-kanye-west-purchase/

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/i-love-nazis-kanye-west-repeatedly-praises-nazis-and-especially-hitler-in-wild-interview-with-alex-jones/

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‘I Love Nazis’: Kanye West Repeatedly Praises Nazis and ‘Especially Hitler’ in Wild Interview With Alex Jones

Kyle MantylaBy Kyle Mantyla | December 1, 2022

Kanye West, the rap mogul who now goes by the name Ye, recently teamed up with Nick Fuentes, the racist, misogynistic, America-hating, Christian fascist leader of the white nationalist America First movement. Brought together by their mutual virulent antisemitism, the two recently had dinner with former President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort, andFuentes is reportedly playing a key role in planning West’s presidential campaign.

Today, West and Fuentes joined far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones live in studio, where West, shielded behind a face mask, spent hours delivering bizarre rants, attacking Jews, and repeatedly praising Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Jones, West, and Fuentes were joined later in the program by far-right activists Laura Loomer and Ali Alexander.

West kicked things off by boldly declaring that he sees good things in every person, “especially Hitler.”

Jones, who grew increasingly uncomfortable with West’s praise for Hitler and the Nazis as the show went on, repeatedly tried to downplay West’s comments. But at every turn, West doubled down, openly insisting that people need to stop criticizing the Nazis all the time.

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“I love Nazis,” West stated at one point,prompting Jones to respond, “well, I disagree with that.”

In a final, desperate effort to help West extricate himself from the potentially career-ending debacle the interview had become, Jones tried to get West to admit that he did not, in fact, love Hitler. But West was having none of it: “There a lot of things that I loooooooove about Hitler. A lahhhhhhhht of things.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/nick-fuentes-trump-2658804180/

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/12/this-is-nazism-kanye-west/

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https://www.mediamatters.org/infowars/rapper-ye-goes-unhinged-antisemitic-rant-infowars

https://www.mediamatters.org/tim-pool/tim-pool-says-media-has-been-unfair-ye-and-blames-his-behavior-being-stressed-out-over-his

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Fox News’ near-total silence on former President Donald Trump’s meeting with Nick Fuentes and the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, points to the inroads that white nationalism and virulent antisemitism have made at the network — and the difficulty the Republican Party would have in trying to remove that faction from its coalition.

The news that Fuentes and Ye had dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago home and resort last Tuesday triggered a stream of denunciations from civil rights groups and calls for Republicans to speak out. The friendly sitdown came in spite of a weekslong firestorm surrounding Ye’s increasingly open anti-Jewish rhetoric. Fuentes, meanwhile, is a white supremacist leader who attended the deadly 2017 Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, called for a “white uprising” to install Trump as a dictator, and has generated a lengthy list of bigoted statements, including his recent exhortation for Jews to “get the fuck out of America.”

Republican leaders are divided over whether bigots like Ye and Fuentes should be shunned and the former president condemned for meeting with them. Ultimately, this argument is a proxy fight over the question of whether the white supremacists, Proud Boys, antisemites, and other deplorables who made common cause with Trump should be ushered out of the party. Some, like former Vice President Mike Pence, have spoken out. Others have criticized Fuentes while letting Trump off the hook, like potential House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), or remained silent, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Fox’s propagandists have joined the side of the silent. The network devoted a mere seven minutes to the dinner from the time the story broke on Friday through the weekend, and ignored it altogether on Monday. Notably, influential prime-time hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham have not mentioned the story at all. Fox is signaling to the viewers who trust it above all other news sources that the story is not important.

Fox’s quiet acquiescence points to a quandary for the network. It would apparently be a step too far for Fox to support Trump meeting with such despicable bigots – that could threaten its relations with advertisers and cable carriers. But the network is also too tightly intertwined with that world to criticize him for it. It has a Tucker Carlson problem.

Fox personalities condemning Trump for meeting with Ye would amount to a hairpin turn for the network. They were touting Ye’s bravery just weeks ago after Ye talked up Trump in Carlson’s fawning interview with him. But as they lavished praise on the rapper, the network was keeping under wraps some of the the anti-Jewish comments West made in the same discussion. When Ye started making similarly antisemitic remarks on social media, some at Fox criticized him – though not Carlson, who pretended that outburst hadn’t happened and continued to laud him.

Fuentes’ noxious racism and antisemitism are more explicit than what is typically found on Fox, and the network would seem to face less risk in condemning him. But Carlson in particular has made his show a clearinghouse for antisemitic tropes, white nationalist talking points, and fringe-right bigots. All the while, he has denied the existence of the white supremacists who praise him for mainstreaming their worldview. How could Carlson plausibly berate Trump for meeting with a white supremacist when he’s spent years telling his viewers that white supremacists don’t exist? And how could anyone else at the network convincingly draw a line between Fuentes’ commentary and what viewers see in its 8 p.m. hour?

Fox’s problem mirrors that of the GOP. Republican leaders believe that it needs the extremists Trump ushered into the party in order to win elections. Fox hosts and executives likewise recognize that if they aim at such deplorables, they may hit their own viewers. The result is that rank and file Republicans may not hear that the meeting ever happened – and if they do, the source will be a mainstream outlet that Fox has relentlessly trained them to ignore. If Fox creates the context through which its viewers interpret news, the message it is sending is that Trump dining with bigots is not important.

The Fox mantra is to “respect the audience.” In practice, that means keeping them cosseted from information that may displease them, no matter how extreme they become or what conspiracy theories they end up believing.

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On Friday, right-wing Washington Examiner political correspondent Byron York took to Twitter to warn that former President Donald Trump's increasingly open fraternization with white nationalists like Nick Fuentes is a crisis for the Republican Party.

"Trump, Kanye, Nick Fuentes — No longer a disaster waiting to happen," wrote York. "Now just a disaster.

This comes after Fuentes reportedly traveled to Trump's Mar-a-Lago country club residence in Palm Beach, Florida for a meeting — after which pro-Trump rapper Kanye West claimed that Trump was "really impressed" with the far-right activist.

Fuentes first gained prominence after his participation in the 2017 white supremacist "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which resulted in the murder of a counterprotester. He leads a movement known as the "Groyper Army," an association of extremist internet trolls whose mission is to inject white nationalist ideology into the mainstream of political debate. Fuentes was active in politics during the 2022 midterms as well, with failed Washington Congressional candidate Joe Kent seeking his endorsement.

Kanye West himself, who also goes by the mononym Ye, has come under heavy fire in recent weeks for promoting anti-Semitic beliefs, including a social media rant in which he said he was going to go "death con 3" on Jewish people.

All of this comes as Trump is preparing for his third consecutive run for president in 2024, which has conservative forces unsure whether to fall in with the base or back him once more.

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leaked full tape

https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/kanye-west-2658467170/

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/ben-shapiro-kanye-west-defenders/

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https://www.mediamatters.org/infowars/kanye-west-infowars-feedback-loop

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The Kanye West-Infowars feedback loop

West namechecked Alex Jones during his interview with Tucker Carlson, and an Infowars host defended West's antisemitic remarks, claiming that the backlash to West’s remarks “only proves what he is talking about is real.”

WRITTEN BY MADELINE PELTZ

PUBLISHED 10/10/22

Far-right outlet Infowars celebrated Kanye West after he made multiple antisemitic remarks on Instagram and Twitter over the weekend and pushed conspiracy theories on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight. The admiration goes both ways — West shouted out Infowars head Alex Jones during his interview on Fox.

West has made multiple antisemitic remarks over the course of his recent media tour. On Instagram, he posted screenshots of a text message allegedly sent to media mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, in which he wrote “I'ma use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me.” After he was restricted from posting on Instagram, he took to Twitter and threatened to go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” who he claimed “have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.”

On the October 9 edition of Infowars’ Sunday Night Live, Jones reacted to West’s segment on Tucker Carlson Tonight, during which the rapper remarked, “Have I reached Alex Jones territory yet?”

Jones said “people are waking up and very exciting, positive things are happening” in response to West’s conspiracy theory suggesting that actor Matthew McConaughey and clothing retailer the Gap knew about the Uvalde school shooting before it happened. Jones added that West “has a lot of courage, and so does Candace Owens,” after the pair wore T-shirts that said “White Lives Matter”at West’s Paris fashion show. Jones took credit, saying, “We woke up Kanye West, folks.”

Video CitationFrom the October 9, 2022 edition of Infowars' Sunday Night Live

Later on, Infowars host Owen Shroyer took over the broadcast and went on a full-fledged antisemitic rant, saying he has “yet to see what Kanye West has said that’s bigoted.” Shroyer defended West, and concluded his segment by blaming Jewish people for poverty among Black Americans “when Jewish people are making out like bandits making millions of dollars on foreign policies.” He also said West is “being attacked relentlessly because he said ‘Jew.’”

Video CitationFrom the October 9, 2022 edition of Infowars' Sunday Night Live

OWEN SHROYER (HOST): I don’t see anything bigoted about it. Now you have the Democrat Party, you have the ADL, you have the SPLC, you have all these different groups and you have the conservative wing, the Israel First MAGA conservative wing, they’re all going after Kanye West too, saying he is bigoted. I did not hear one thing Kanye West said that was bigoted.

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I don’t want to be involved in Russia-Ukraine. I don’t want to be involved in Israel-Palestine. I don’t want to be involved in Saudi Arabia-Yemen. I don’t want to be involved in any of this crap, and neither does Kanye West. And he sees this and he says why are Americans poor and hungry — specifically Black Americans — poor and hungry, when Jewish people are making out like bandits making millions of dollars on foreign policies? … So Kanye being attacked relentlessly because he said “Jew.” That’s what it is. You’re not even allowed to say it, you’re not even allowed to point out that there’s anybody Jewish in the media or anybody Jewish in the Congress, you’re not allowed to do it.

When the broadcast resumed after a break, Shroyer said the backlash to West’s remarks “only proves what he is talking about is real.”

VideoCitationFrom the October 9, 2022 edition of Infowars' Sunday Night Live

Infowars also published an article with the headline “Establishment Sends Warning to Kanye West For Speaking His Mind.”

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https://www.mediamatters.org/white-nationalism/far-right-extremists-celebrate-embrace-and-defend-kanye-wests-antisemitic-remarks

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CANDACE OWENS (HOST): Now, if you are an honest person, you did not think this tweet was antisemitic. You did not think that he wrote this tweet because he hates or wants to genocide Jewish people. This does not represent the beginning of the Holocaust. That's if you're an honest person, you will admit that. Right? If you're an honest person, when you read this tweet, you had no idea what he was talking about. I had no idea, when I read this tweet, what the hell he was talking about. This tweet inspired questions, not answers.

First and foremost, what is death con three? Did he mean def con three? Which would be a military defense position, not an offense – for those of you are offended. A military defense position. Is he tweeting this because he's reading the Newsweek headline calling him an antisemitic? Is he angry because he can't believe that he's not free to talk about people in his life who happened to be Jewish – right? – without being accused of antisemitism?Is he saying, I'm not going to shut up and I'm going to keep tweeting and I'm going to keep calling these people out, referring to his friends that he feels slided by? Is he talking about Jared Kushner and Josh Kushner?

If you're a liar, you'd say, no, I was scared, Candace. I actually thought that Kanye West was going to launch a military strike in Israel. Because that's the reaction, like, when I woke up, and I looked at the headlines, the reaction was, like, Kanye West had gotten together a military strike and it was going to go forward in the morning time in Israel. That was the reaction that was met with this tweet.

Now, once again, I want to make this very clear – this is not a defense of his tweet. This is an open question which never seems to happen anymore. It's like you cannot even say the word Jewish without people getting upset. In the same way that you're not allowed to say Black anymore.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/white-nationalism/far-right-extremists-celebrate-embrace-and-defend-kanye-wests-antisemitic-remarks

no lnx vid twts

Far-right extremists celebrate, embrace, and defend Kanye West’s antisemitic remarks

WRITTEN BY JUSTIN HOROWITZ

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM MEDIA MATTERS STAFF

PUBLISHED 10/10/22

Far-right and neo-Nazi-linked extremists are embracing, celebrating, and defending rapper Kanye West’s recent antisemitic remarks.

On October 8, West lashed out at Jewish people, writing, “I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” In the same tweet, he claimed, “You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.” West later tweeted, “Who you think created cancel culture?"

Here are examples of violent far-right and neo-Nazi-linked extremists celebrating West and his antisemitic comments:

Infowars celebrated West multiple times on October 9. Host Owen Shroyer said, “I did not hear one thing Kanye West said that was bigoted.” He later added that the backlash to his antisemitic remarks “only proves what he’s talking about is real.”

Video file

Video

CitationFrom the October 9, 2022 edition of Infowars' Sunday Night Live

White nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes posted on Telegram, “​​Kanye is going to be cancelled by the Jews for saying that the Jews invented cancel culture” and shared multiple memes celebrating the rapper. Fuentes also streamed West’s music on his Cozy.TV platform while wearing a West-inspired face covering. The title of the stream was “DEFCON 3.”

Fuentes CozyTV stream West

Daily Wire host Candace Owens on West's “death con 3” tweet: “If you are an honest person, you did not think this tweet was antisemitic.” Owens added that, “It's like you cannot even say the word Jewish without people getting upset.”

Video file

Video CitationFrom the October 10, 2022, edition of The Daily Wire's Candace Owens

Antisemite and Gab founder Andrew Torba posted, “How do we get Kanye on Gab?"

Neo-Nazi blog The Daily Stormer published a story by neo-Nazi founder Andrew Anglin with the headline “Lying Jew Media Claims Kanye West is Mentally Ill for Going Death Con 3 on Jewish People.” On October 10, the header on the site’s homepage read “d e a t h c o n 3” and featured multiple stories celebrating West’s antisemitism.

Andrew Anglin: “Lying Jew Media Claims Kanye West is Mentally Ill for Going Death Con 3 on Jewish People”.

Stop the Steal organizer Ali Alexander used West's remarks to suggest that Jewish people have “weaponized their trauma” and complained that “all of us are forced to learn their trauma.”

Ali Alexander on Kayne West's antisemitic posts

OCTOBER 9, 2022

Ali Alexander on Kayne West's antisemitic posts

AudioCitationFrom the October 9, 2022, edition of Answers with Ali Alexander

Far-right British extremist Tommy Robinson wrote that West’s statement “needs to be addressed” above a meme that appears to suggest that liberals are overreacting to West’s comments.

Neo-Nazi streamer Baked Alaska compared himself to West and wrote, “IT KEEPS GETTING BETTER AND BETTER” under a screenshot of one of West’s Instagram posts.

Former BlazeTV host Elijah Schaffer posted multiple tweets that appear to be in support of West.

BlazeTVhost Jason Whitlock defended West’s remarks in a tweet, writing, “You can't question black entertainers' unhealthy relationship with non-religious Jewish power brokers in Hollywood.”

White nationalist and notorious antisemite Vincent James Foxx wrote on Telegram, “Kanye is going to do another Holocaust?”

Fascist streamer Dalton Clodfelter wrote that West’s remarks are “very admirable.”

Fuentes' cronies Tyler Russell and Brandt Wiggins both celebrated West’s remarks with posts on Telegram.

Failed congressional candidate and anti-Muslim bigot Laura Loomer defended West’s remarks with multiple posts on Gab. In one post, she wrote, “Ye does have a point in his posts.”

On violent white nationalist Gavin McInnes’ Censored.TV, host Josh Lekach said he admires West and claimed, “I don’t understand why you can’t talk bad about the Jews.” Lekach added he believes that West may be killed for his beliefs.

CitationFrom the October 8, 2022, edition of Censored.TV's Wrong Opinion

West’s antisemitic remarks came after he was criticized for wearing a “WHITE LIVES MATTER” shirt last week at Paris Fashion Week. He later appeared on white nationalist Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show to ramble about censorship, the media, his shirt, his career, and his family.

Updated (10/10/22): This post has been updated with additional examples.

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Candace Owens says of Kanye West's “death con 3” tweet about Jewish people: “If you are an honest person, you did not think this tweet was antisemitic”

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The Kanye West-Infowars feedback loop

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Fox hosts call Kanye West's antisemitic posts “ugly,” then say the real issue is their removal from social media platforms

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https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2020/12/08/spindell-conspiracies-political-violence/

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Elections official stands by at rally as speakers spread conspiracies, promote political violence

BY: HENRY REDMAN - DECEMBER 8, 2020 

Wisconsin Trump election rally

Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Robert Spindell is seen speaking between two people draped in the flags of right wing movements, the Tea Party and Trumpism. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

One of the six officials charged with administering and protecting Wisconsin’s elections system stood on the steps of the State Capitol Monday afternoon as a group of President Donald Trump’s supporters chanted “stop the steal.” 

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Robert Spindell, one of three Republicans on the Wisconsin Elections Commission stood by as speakers spread conspiracy theories about election fraud and COVID-19, compared the 2020 presidential election to Pearl Harbor and advocated for the violent overthrow of the government. 

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Spindell, in his short speech to the flag-waving and MAGA hat wearing crowd of Trump voters, said he was attending the rally as a private citizen, not in his capacity as a government official. He said the election fraud committed in the 1950s and 60s by former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley shows election fraud could have been committed this year.

Wisconsin Trump election rally

Wisconsin Elections Commissioner Robert Spindell speaks at the rally. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

While he did not give any specific examples of voter fraud in Wisconsin, Spindell implied, falsely, that it had happened.

“There’s no evidence vote fraud did not occur,” Spindell said, calling for election officials to prove a negative. 

Spindell also went through a laundry list of grievances about elections this year.

He complained about pre-election lawsuits filed by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and Democratic National Committee that attempted to change some election rules to make voting easier during a pandemic. Ultimately these changes were struck down by a federal appellate court and the U.S. Supreme Court.

He complained that the Democrats on the elections commission and the body’s non-partisan staff refused to remove from the voter rolls hundreds of thousands of people who may have moved or died  — a decision that was made to avoid mistakenly disenfranchising people. The status of Wisconsin’s so-called voter purge is still pending an order from the Wisconsin Supreme Court but there’s no evidence dead people voted and people who have moved can update their registration at the polls on Election Day.

Wisconsin Trump election rally]

Evidence of Wisconsin’s year of political protest with pro-Trump protesters stand near anti-police graffiti from Black Lives Matter protests. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)]

Spindell complained that municipal clerks filled in missing addresses on absentee ballots, a practice allowed under guidance provided by the Wisconsin Elections Commission and which has been in place for previous elections.

Finally, he complained that candidates from the Green Party and Kanye West were not allowed on the presidential ballot because of issues with their paperwork. Emails showed Spindell attempted to assist the Green Party in its efforts to get on the ballot despite failing to properly file nomination papers. Spindell has repeatedly complained that not allowing West on the ballot, even though his campaign missed the deadline to file, was disenfranchisement of Black voters. 

Wisconsin Trump election rally

A QAnon flag flies in front of the Wisconsin State Capitol at the Dec. 7 pro-Trump election rally. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

“How about Kenyon (sic.) West?” Spindell said. 

At the start of the rally, the largely un-masked crowd gathered closely together to sing “God Bless America,” “The Star Spangled Banner” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The group was outside; still, singing is considered by the CDC to be an especially effective vector of COVID-19 spread.

Near the singers, a group of 15 people carrying Trump flags did laps of the Capitol while praying the rosary.

Appearing alongside Spindell was the rally’s headliner, Minnesota native, MyPillow CEO and Trump ally Michael Lindell. Lindell also recently donated to the bail fund of Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager charged with killing two people at a racial justice protest in Kenosha in August.

Wisconsin Trump election rally

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell speaks to the crowd. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)]

Even though other Republicans on the elections commission have definitively announced there were no issues with the state’s election machines, Spindell stood by as Lindell claimed Trump lost Wisconsin because of issues with Dominion voting machines — a disproven conspiracy theory.

“I would like to stay officially on the record that I have complete confidence in the voting equipment in use in Wisconsin, that I think there is no evidence of systemic problems of software problems programming problems hacking, there’s no evidence of switched votes,” Republican commissioner Dean Knudson said last week.

Lindell, as he argued for the Electoral College to be bypassed so the selection of the president could go to state congressional delegations, stated that Trump had actually won in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Lindell’s proof that Trump won these states was that on election night, the odds at the sportsbooks said Trump was the 3-1 favorite to win. Betting odds on presidential elections aren’t an adequate predictor of outcome. For example, PredictIt, a popular political prediction site, gave Hillary Clinton a chance at being elected president for most of 2020. 

[Wisconsin Trump election rally

A rally attendee sits draped in a “Thin Blue Line” pro-police blanket. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)]

The most prominent speaker was Lindell, but the rally featured a number of other right-wing speakers who  spread conspiracy theories and railed against the threats of communism, socialism and Marxism that they believe President-elect Joe Biden represents.

The rally, which was part of a “March for Trump” bus tour, is stopping in 27 cities across the country in an attempt to somehow overturn the results of the election.

“We’re trying to go through all the corrupt states with all the corruption,” one speaker said.

[Wisconsin Trump election rally

Release the Kraken is catchphrase for right wing conspiracies signifying the dubious legal strategy of conservative lawyer Sidney Powell. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)]

But short of any legal remedies, which appear to be dwindling as the president continues to lose in court, the rally speakers said there are other options to fight the election results.

“The Electoral College is going to fear We the People,” said another speaker. “Learn our 2nd Amendment, we need to know how to fire those handguns, fire those rifles.”

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Kanye West Associate Pressured Poll Worker to Confess to Voter Fraud - Rolling Stone

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"You Are a Loose End … That Needs to Tidy Up.’ Kanye West Associate Accused of Pressuring Election Worker to Confess to Voter Fraud

Trevian Kutti, a former publicist for R. Kelly, allegedly warned Ruby Freeman that if she did not confess to voter fraud allegations, she would be arrested

By BRENNA EHRLICH

MIAMI, FLORIDA - DECEMBER 02: Trevian Kutti is seen wearing a Balmain top and white shirt dress on December 02, 2021 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Daniel Zuchnik/Getty Images)MIAMI,

Trevian Kutti reportedly pressured a 62-year-old Georgia election worker to confess to voter fraud allegations.

Ex-R. Kelly publicist and current Kanye West associate Trevian Kutti reportedly pressured a 62-year-old Georgia election worker to confess to voter fraud allegations weeks after the 2020 presidential election, according to Reuters.

Kutti allegedly visited the home of Ruby Freeman on Jan. 4, 2021 and offered the woman help in the wake of death threats she said was receiving after being targeted by both Trump and a far-right website trumpeting allegations that Freeman and her daughter used suitcases of fake Biden ballots to help secure his victory. Those ballots were proven to be legit.

The pair went on to sue The Gateway Pundit for defamation earlier this month. The suit alleges that the publication’s stories “instigated a deluge of intimidation, harassment, and threats that has forced them to change their phone numbers, delete their online accounts, and fear for their physical safety.”

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When Kutti — along with an unidentified male — showed up at Freeman’s door, the older woman was already fearful of strangers, so she called the police to assist with the conversation, during which Kutti said she was visiting under the auspices of a “high-profile individual” who warned that if Freeman did not confess to voter fraud allegations, she would be arrested after 48 hours.

Kutti no longer appears to officially be a member of West’s PR team, although the rapper is a long-time friend and supporter of Trump and ran for president in 2020 as well. A rep for West did not immediately reply to request for comment. Attempts to reach Kutti were not immediately successful, but in a statement, Kutti said, “I demand interested parties obtain and release the unedited version of the body cam footage in its entirety.”

Police bodycam video recorded on Jan. 4, 2021, shows Trevian Kutti, a publicist for hip-hop artist Kanye West, telling a Georgia election worker who former President Trump falsely accused of manipulating votes that she was in imminent danger https://t.co/AeF1I18mdJ pic.twitter.com/ott7ohVQnI

— Reuters (@Reuters) December 10, 2021

The women discussed the situation further at the police station, on an officer’s suggestion, and via bodycam footage, Kutti can be heard saying: “I cannot say what specifically will take place… I just know that it will disrupt your freedom… and the freedom of one or more of your family members. … You are a loose end for a party that needs to tidy up.” Kutti then put a man called “Harrison Ford” on speakerphone who said he could offer Freeman protection. Ford was not, perhaps unsurprisingly, the actor of Indiana Jones fame. The man told Freeman if she confessed to voter fraud, he would offer her legal protection; if she declined, she would go to jail.

Freeman was not sold on the man’s words and proclaimed “the devil is a liar” before calling for the officer’s aid. Later, trouble did befall Freeman, but not from the government.  According to Freeman and her daughter’s lawsuit, the FBI called her on Jan. 5, warning her to leave her home because it was not safe. On Jan 6., the same day insurrectionists stormed the Capitol, Trump supporters also surrounded Freeman’s house.

In This Article: Donald Trump, Kanye West, R. Kelly

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newsweek

kanye West Publicist Said 'Harrison Ford' Would Help Election Official if She Admitted Fraud

BY JUSTIN KLAWANS ON 12/10/21

Kanye West's publicist allegedly told a Georgia election official that she would get "Harrison Ford" to help her stay safe if she admitted to committing fraud during the 2020 presidential election.

The conversation occurred in the weeks after the election between the publicist, Chicago-based Trevian Kutti, and 62-year-old Ruby Freeman regarding Freeman's actions as a temporary election worker.

Freeman had made headlines in December 2020 when former President Donald Trump falsely accused her of counting fake mail-in ballots from mysterious suitcases. In reality, the suitcases were standard ballot holding containers, and that the votes were all legitimate.

Forensic audits, including some from former Trump officials, have continued to find no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Freeman stated that she called 911 after Kutti showed up at her suburban Atlanta house in January 2021, claiming that she was sent by an unnamed "high-profile individual." Kutti then told Freeman that she had two days to confess to election fraud or she would be sent to jail.

The back-and-forth encounter eventually led to the women agreeing to have a conversation at the police station. Police bodycam footage obtained by Reuters captured a portion of their talk.

Kutti can be heard telling Freeman that she "didn't want to frighten you, but we had to find you within this timeframe."

After this exchange, Kutti appears to allude to Freeman and her family being in danger if she did not confess to voter fraud. However, Kutti added that she did have a way to ensure Freeman's safety.

"We have put in placement a way to move you, to secure you...I cannot say specifically what will take place," Kutti can be heard saying.

Kanye West Oval Office

A publicist for Kanye West reportedly told an election official that she would get 'Harrison Ford' to help her as long as she confessed to voter fraud which she did not partake in. Here, West can be seen in the Oval Office with former President Donald Trump.

SAUL LOEB/GETTY]

"I would like to connect now on the phone, Harrison Ford, who will be taking this situation to a detailed level for you," she continues, seemingly referring to the famous Star Wars and Indiana Jones actor. She also told Freeman that she works with "some of the biggest names in the industry."

However, as the conversation continues, Kutti clarifies that the Harrison Ford in question was not the Hollywood star, but rather "a Black progressive crisis manager, with very high level, with authoritative powers to get you protection that you need."

The phone conversation with Ford was not captured on bodycam footage, but Freeman stated that Ford and Kutti attempted for an hour to get her to confess to voter fraud, although they were unsuccessful.

Additional interactions included Kutti calling Freeman a "loose end for a party that needs to tidy up," and telling her that she would go to jail if she didn't reveal all of her information.

Kutti's online profile states that she started working for Kanye West in 2018. West is a known supporter of former President Trump and famously met with him in the Oval Office. West also ran for president in 2020 on the ticket for his own party, called The Birthday Party.

---

distractify

A Publicist Reportedly Close to Kanye West Needs Her Own Publicist After a Political Scandal

Jamie Lerner - Author

DEC. 13 2021,

Just when we thought we were already past the 2020 election, news of Trump supporters refusing to let go of the results is still making the rounds. Recently, reports surfaced about an associate of Kanye West, Trevian Kutti, attempting to manipulate a poll worker into admitting false guilt of election fraud.

In the reports, Trevian Kutti is named as Kanye West’s publicist, but further information reveals that Kutti may not be as closely linked to West as suspected.

Many media reports associate Trevian Kutti with Kanye West, aka “Ye.”

While Kutti’s relationship with West remains unclear, it’s confirmed that she did work for R. Kelly up until 2018. On her LinkedIn, she’s listed as the Director of “TrevianWorldwide." She also serves as a publicist to boxing champion Terence Crawford and atelier Krikor Jabotian.

Until recently, her bio also stated that she was “secured as publicist to Kanye West” in 2018and “serves as West’s Director of Operations.”

Regardless of whether she currently works for West, Kutti has been linked to him as a confidante. But since Reuters published their report of Kutti’s inappropriate and uncalled-for actions toward Freeman, a different publicist on West’s team confirmed that Kutti was not “associated” with West when she went to visit Freeman.

Kanye West’s associate, Trevian Kutti, threatened and tried to manipulate poll worker Ruby Freeman.

On Jan. 4, two days before the events of the Jan. 6 protest, Kutti flew to Atlanta to meet with Ruby Freeman. Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, who also worked the polls during the 2020 election, were publicly accused by Rudy Giuliani of “stealing votes” and “passing out dope.”

However, federal officials concluded that the video allegedly showing this only showed normal ballot counting. But that didn’t stop Trump’s supporters from threatening and harrassing the mother-daughter duo.

Kutti showed up at Freeman’s door and claimed that she was sent by an undisclosed “high-profile individual” to help Freeman. According to Kutti, Freeman was “in danger” because unknown people would be coming to hurt her in “48 hours.” Frightened by Kutti’s claims, Freeman called 911 to make sure that law enforcement could assist in the situation.

The police recommended that Kutti and Freeman discuss the matter at the police station, where the conversation was recorded by a body cam. Throughout their hour-long discussion, Kutti offered legal assistance if Freeman would admit to tampering with the election, threatening Freeman by claiming she’d go to jail if she did not admit to guilt.

Trevian Kutti spoke out against the media’s depiction of what happened with Freeman.

Despite what now seems to be a scam engineered to try to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election, Kutti was correct about people showing up at Freeman’s house.

The FBI advised Freeman to leave her house, and 48 hours later, Trump supporters swarmed her property with bullhorns. Freeman and her daughter have since sued Gateway Pundit for defamation.

SOURCE: INSTAGRAM

While we don’t know how closely Kutti is tied to Kanye West, she recently shared a post supporting his bid for Creative Director of Louis Vuitton.

In addition, Kutti claims that Reuters and the media have completely missed the mark on what actually happened. As more details emerge, the full story may become clearer.

---

A reminder that Lady Ruby's ordeal included Kanye's publicist threatening her (dailykos.com)

no lnx twt

a  reminder that Lady Ruby's ordeal included Kanye's publicist threatening her

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday June 21, 2022

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Ruby Freeman, a temp election worker, received a threatening text message that said 'We know where you live, we coming to get you."

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We’re reminded in the Select Committee hearings of the extent of the hate and harassment campaign waged by trumpists. Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman were election workers targeted by Trump and trumpists in the pre-1/6 period after the 2020 election.

A publicist for Kanye West pressured a Georgia election worker to confess to unfounded election fraud claims.

Trevian Kutti paid a visit to Ruby Freeman, warning that she'd be arrested in 48 hours if she didn't.

Bodycam footage obtained by Reuters shows Kutti offering to "move" and "secure" Freeman.

ATLANTA, Dec 10 — Weeks after the 2020 election, a Chicago publicist for hip-hop artist Kanye West traveled to the suburban home of Ruby Freeman, a frightened Georgia election worker who was facing death threats after being falsely accused by former President Donald Trump of manipulating votes. The publicist knocked on the door and offered to help.

The visitor, Trevian Kutti, gave her name but didn’t say she worked for West, a longtime billionaire friend of Trump. She said she was sent by a “high-profile individual,” whom she didn’t identify, to give Freeman an urgent message: confess to Trump’s voter-fraud allegations, or people would come to her home in 48 hours, and she’d go to jail.

www.nbcnews.com/…

(CNN)

Investigators probing efforts to meddle with the 2020 election results in Georgia have sought testimony from a former publicist to R. Kelly and Kanye West who allegedly pressured a local election worker, according to court documents obtained by CNN.

The publicist, Trevian Kutti, made headlines last year when Reuters reported that Kutti had pressed a Georgia election worker to confess to Donald Trump's baseless voter fraud claims or face dire consequences. Kutti told the election worker she was a "crisis manager and was sent from a high-profile individual," according to a police report included in the court filing.

220613175628-trevian-kutti-screengrab-file-010421-exlarge-1691.jpg

The heart of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' probe has focused on attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn the state's 2020 election results. But the interest in Kutti is an indication of the investigation's sprawling nature. Prior to seating a special grand jury in May, Willis' team had already spoken to more than 50 witnesses and planned to subpoena dozens of others, a source familiar with the probe told CNN.

A special grand jury could hear from Kutti and a number of other witnesses as early as this week. Several current and former officials in the Georgia secretary of state's office have been subpoenaed to testify. Among them: former investigator Frances Watson, who Trump called in December 2020, telling her she would be "praised" for finding fraud. Gabe Sterling, the chief operating officer, who pleaded with Trump to denounce the harassment of election officials and their families, is also expected to testify.

www.cnn.com/...

Moss & Freeman are a mother-daughter duo who processed ballots in Fulton County, GA.

They were accused of many crimes, like unloading "suitcases" of fake Biden ballots, double-counting ballots, and tampering w/ voting machines.

The "crime of the century," Giuliani claimed. 2/

These accusations, echoed by Trump himself, turned Moss and Freeman's lives inside out.

They received racist and violent threats, their careers suffered, and they feared for their safety.

Ruby Freeman had to flee her home for two months, she testified. See below... 3/

Image

Moss and Freeman became just the latest private citizens to become victims of viral, harmful conspiracy theories related to politics and elections.

So, what could they do to clear their names?

They sued @OANN, Rudy Giuliani, and several others. 4/

Complaint - Freeman & Moss v. OAN et al. - Protect Democracy

Here's where we get to the intriguing backstory I mentioned at the start of this thread.

Seated behind Shaye Moss and next to Ruby Freeman at today's @January6thCmte hearing were two of their lawyers, Mike Gottlieb & Meryl Governski.

(They're to the left of Ruby in the red.) 5/

Image

So why do I mention these two lawyers?

For nearly six years, Gottlieb & Governski have been developing a playbook for how the law can combat viral conspiracy theories and defend victims.

Stop the Steal 1.0?✅

Pizzagate?✅

Seth Rich's brother?✅

6/

For years I've followed Gottlieb and Governski's work — and the work of the lawyers they team up with — as part of my book reporting about the Seth Rich saga.

They're on the leading edge of this work. And they've gotten results time and again. 7/ rollingstone.com/politics/polit…

These lawyers would be the first to tell you that today belongs to Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman.

You really should watch their testimony if you haven't:

However, if you want to know the inside story of how a small band of lawyers fought viral lies... 8/

...well, I've got a book for you.

I spent years watching Gottlieb, Governski, and their colleagues figure out how to fight for truth and facts in this truth-challenged era of ours.

It's in my upcoming book. Check it out — and thanks for following along.

A Death on W Street

Post-script: If you want to read more about these lawyers' work on behalf of Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman partnering with @protctdemocracy, there's a wealth of information here:

Fighting Defamation Aimed at Election Workers - Protect Democracy

---

=

chris h with  asks what if next time it's FBI making offer?

it's just ye now ;)  not clear how involved he is vs her freelance

lang rhet interesting/odd

loose end to tidy up == kill?!

https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/kanye-trump-voter-fraud/

grifter/ ideol entre?

publicist for rapper Kanye West is accused of traveling to Georgia in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election and pressuring a poll worker to confess to voter fraud,as alleged by then-President Donald Trump and his allies. Despite their extensive efforts to prove Trump actually won the election, their claims of voter fraud have been consistently debunked and rejected by courts.

According to Reuters, the publicist Trevian Kutti attempted to confront 62-year-old grandmother and poll worker, Ruby Freeman. On Jan. 4, Kutti reportedly arrived at Freeman's home with an unidentified male to discuss the election. Kutti is said to have insisted that she'd come as a representative of a "high-profile individual” to deliver a clear ultimatum: "confess to Trump’s voter-fraud allegations, or people would come to her home in 48 hours, and she’d go to jail."

Out of fear, Freeman called 911. “They’re saying that I need help, that it’s just a matter of time that they are going to come out for me and my family,” Freeman said on the call. When a Cobb County police officer arrived at the home, he suggested that they all speak at the station. After going there, Kutti spoke with Freeman as she continued to explain the purpose for her visit.

Audio recordings of Kutti's discussion with Freeman have also come to light in the Reuters article. While she did not detail specific consequences, Kutti did appear to issue a veiled threat to Freeman.

“I cannot say what specifically will take place,” Kutti is reportedly heard saying to Freeman in the audio recording. “I just know that it will disrupt your freedom," she said, "and the freedom of one or more of your family members.”

Kutti continued, “You are a loose end for a party that needs to tidy up."

According to Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague, the co-authors of the previously-released book, "The Steal,” Kutti went a step further with her remarks suggesting that Freeman and her daughter provide statements to a U.S. attorney.

“What I would like for you to do is consider talking to a U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Georgiawho is willing to take a statement from you and your daughter. And who in turn, if you are honest about the course of events that took place at State Farm Arena, will possibly be willing to grant you and your daughter immunity from charges that will imminently be brought,” Kutti told Freeman.

Kutti has not responded to any requests for comments. Watch the video below:

---

---

any connection?

NO LNX

Wisconsin Supreme Court rules to keep Green Party off the ballot

Patrick Marley

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MADISON - The Wisconsin Supreme Court kept the Green Party's presidential ticket off the ballot Monday, disappointing party members but ensuring more than a million absentee ballots will be sent to voters Thursday as required by state law.

The ruling also bolsters hopes for Democrats, who feared presidential nominee Joe Biden could lose a small share of his votes to the liberal third party. Republicans had hoped the Green Party would shave just enough votes from Biden's total to give President Donald Trump a victory this fall in a state he narrowly won in 2016.

Justice Brian Hagedorn broke with his fellow conservatives to form a majority with the court's liberals that kept Green Party nominee Howie Hawkins off the ballot.

The majority found Hawkins and his running mate, Milwaukee native Angela Walker, waited too long to bring their legal challenge.

"Even if we would ultimately determine that the petitioners’ claims are meritorious, given their delay in asserting their rights, we would be unable to provide meaningful relief without completely upsetting the election," the majority wrote in its unsigned opinion. 

The state Elections Commission split 3-3 last month on whether to put Hawkins and Walker on the ballot. The Republican members of the commission backed putting Hawkins on the ballot but the Democratic members opposed doing so because Walker had listed two addresses on her campaign paperwork.

Walker said she listed two addresses because she moved while the Green Party collected signatures to get on the ballot. She and Hawkins this month asked the Supreme Court to put them on the ballot, contending the state Elections Commission hadn't followed the law.

"We were screwed," Hawkins said in a statement. "Partisan hacks should not be running elections for their own parties."

The justices on Thursday issued a 4-3 order telling election officials not to send absentee ballots while they decided whether to take the case.

:{:{}:

}:

That order was issued by conservatives who control the court. The court's liberals dissented. 

But in a second 4-3 decision, the court on Monday vacated its earlier order and determined ballots could be mailed now. This time, the majority consisted of Hagedorn and the court's liberals, Justices Ann Walsh Bradley, Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky.

In dissent were three conservatives, Chief Justice PatienceRoggensack and Justices Rebecca Bradley and Annette Ziegler. (The Bradleys are not related.)

Roggensack called the Elections Commission "lawless" for keeping Hawkins and Walker off the ballot.

"This lawsuit is not about the Green Party sleeping on its rights," she wrote in an opinion joined by the other dissenters. "It is about the treatment that independent candidates from a small political party received from the Commission, who repeatedly refused to follow the law relative to nomination papers."

In a separate dissent, Ziegler wrote that keeping a worthy candidate off the ballot is "the ultimate voter suppression."

The majority "deprives the Wisconsin people of a voice and strips them of one of the most fundamental tenets of this republic:  the right to express one's will at the ballot box," Ziegler wrote.

The majority decided not to take the case because of looming deadlines. Clerks are required under state law to mail absentee ballots to those who have requested them by Thursday. A separate federal law sets a Saturday deadline for mailing absentee ballots to military and overseas voters.

The majority concluded some ballots may have already been sent, and found that confusion would reign if clerks had to send those voters a second ballot with the names of additional candidates.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Friday identified clerks across the state who together had prepared hundreds of thousands of absentee mailings. But none of the clerks reached by the newspaper said they had actually mailed any ballots yet.

Clerks will mail more than a million absentee ballots on Thursday and then send others as they receive requests from voters. Absentee voting this fall is expected to set a record because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Claire Woodall-Vogg, executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, expressed relief Monday that she would not have to reprint ballots.

"I’m just glad that they made a decision today and recognized the expediency that election administrators and voters need, that they didn’t delay any further," she said.

The case had significant implications for this fall's presidential race. Both Republicans and Democrats believe Hawkins could have siphoned off some of Biden's support, hurting his chances of beating Trump in Wisconsin.

Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by fewer than 23,000 votes in Wisconsin. That year Green Party nominee Jill Stein received about 31,000 votes in the state.

Hawkins' legal team has links to Republicans. One of his aides asked Robert Spindell, a Republican on the Elections Commission, for advice last month on who to hire as an attorney, according to emails between Spindell and Hawkins aide Kevin Zeese.

Hawkins' lead attorney, Andrew Phillips of von Briesen & Roper, was hired last year by Republicans on the Legislature's budget committee to help them sort out a long-running dispute with Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul over how to handle court settlements. 

Another attorney on the case, Jacob Curtis, has worked for Republican former Gov. Scott Walker, Republican state Sen. Duey Stroebel of Saukville and the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.

Phillips also represents the Wisconsin Counties Association, and most counties didn't want the Green Party ticket added to the ballot because they didn't want to reprint ballots. Some supervisors in Milwaukee and Dane counties raised the prospect of quitting the association because its lawyers were working against their interests.

The court issued its ruling as rapper Kanye West also tries to get on Wisconsin's ballot. West, who has praised Trump and gotten help from Republicans, was kept off the ballot after the state Elections Commission ruled 5-1 that his team missed a filing deadline by seconds or minutes.

West sued to get on the ballot, but a Brown County judge on Friday ruled he shouldn't be on Wisconsin's ballot because of the late filing.

He could appeal, but Monday's ruling in the Green Party case suggests he would have little chance of getting on the ballot at this stage.

Hagedorn offers a swing vote

Hagedorn was elected in 2019 with the support of Republicans, but he has departed from his conservative colleagues at times.

In January, he sided with liberals on the court to decline quickly taking a lawsuit over whether people who are believed to have moved should be taken off the voter rolls. That initial decision means those voters are likely to stay on the rolls at least through the Nov. 3 election. 

:{:{}:

}:

In May, Hagedorn, joined liberals in dissent over a ruling that struck down the stay-at-home order issued by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' administration to combat the pandemic. 

Since then, the stakes have become higher for cases involving close votes. Karofsky last month was sworn in as a justice after defeating conservative Justice Daniel Kelly this spring.

Her victory narrowed the court's conservative majority from 5-2 to 4-3. That means liberals can form a majority when they can pick off at least one conservative vote, as they did Monday.

Alison Dirr of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.

Contact Patrick Marley at patrick.marley@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @patrickdmarley.

---

---

Kanye West’s 'Independent' Campaign Was Secretly Run by GOP Elites (thedailybeast.com)

roger s np lnx

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.

At the heart of Kanye’s political operation was Holtzman Vogel,one of the most powerful and well-connected law firms serving major Republican political and nonprofit organizations today. And weaved throughout his campaign, whether the multi-platinum rapper realized it or not, were Republican operatives who may have been less interested in seeing a President West than in re-electing President Donald Trump.

[Election-Meddling Henchwoman Didn’t Work for Kanye: Aide

DON’T KNOW HER]

Paul S. Ryan, vice president of government watchdog Common Cause, called the revelations “a big deal.”

“The importance of disclosure in this matter can’t be overstated,” Ryan told The Daily Beast. “It’s no secret that Kanye West’s candidacy would have a spoiler effect, siphoning votes from Democrat Joe Biden. Voters had a right to know that a high-powered Republican lawyer was providing legal services to Kanye—and federal law requires disclosure of such legal work.”

Federal disclosures also show the campaign enlisted legal services from an array of firms with links to Trump and the Republican Party—including leading voter fraud conspiracy theorists and more than a half-dozen legal practices which went on to push baseless election fraud lawsuits on behalf of Trump or the GOP.

In fact, Holtzman Vogel played key roles in those efforts. They represented Trump in a Pennsylvania lawsuit in late September, while advising the West presidential campaign—advice which at one point included Pennsylvania ballot strategy. The firm is also tied to the Honest Elections Project, which has been involved with voter-suppression efforts.

The former “Birthday Party” contender’s campaign even paid roughly $60,000 to one of those firms—Minnesota-based Mohrman Kaardal—in early December, when it filed a baseless election fraud lawsuit. The suit was ultimately rejected with such vigor that it nearly cost the attorneys their license to practice. That outfit worked with another election challenging group, the Amistad Project, a function of Thomas More Society, which employed Trump attorney and Rudy Giuliani protégéeJenna Ellis. Kanye 2020 retained the firm within days of the Amistad Project’s August launch.

“It’s very clear that the whole point behind Kanye’s campaign was to try to re-elect Donald Trump.”

— Jordan Libowitz, communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

The nature of these hidden connections is obviously complex. And experts say that appears to be the point. Any effort to untangle them will, unfortunately, reflect that. But they say that the red flags—including efforts to cloud disclosures, and Republican operatives exploiting a spoiler candidate—appear to be there.

The Daily Beast shared the court filings and FEC data with a number of government watchdog groups, who all concluded that the campaign and operatives appear to have for one reason or another shielded their connections. The groups found this troubling, and noted that without the documentation in the lawsuit—a breach-of-contract claim which a former campaign vendor filed this spring in Texas state court—the lack of transparency would have kept some of the connections secret.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington reviewed hundreds of campaign communications in court records, as well as Kanye 2020’s FEC filings. Communications director Jordan Libowitz concluded that the campaign bookkeeping was a “disaster,” despite the expert guidance from Holtzman Vogel, and the documents are “enough to raise an eyebrow and a red flag or two.”

“This was absolutely amateur hour. And his campaign paid a lot of money for those results,” Libowitz said. [PATTERN?]

He continued, “It’s very clear that the whole point behind Kanye’s campaign was to try to re-elect Donald Trump. Whether that was a goal of Kanye is another issue. But he was clearly seen as a way to steal potential votes from Biden.”

1051906886

Kanye West hugs President Donald Trump during a meeting in the Oval office in 2018.

Multiple people connected to the campaign, including some of the campaign’s contracted lawyers, had a similar assessment. Some said that messaging decisions had to first go through secretive political “hands.” Others indicated that their involvement had been solicited by known Republican political operatives, though when pressed they all declined to name names. All of them also acknowledged an apparently close relationship between West and top Trump aide Jared Kushner, who held meetings with West at his Wyoming ranch just ahead of his campaign announcement, drawing speculation that the campaigns were coordinating.

One campaign lawyer, Arizona-based attorney Tim La Sota—who has filed election challenges—told The Daily Beast that while West “seemed to be a sincere candidate,” political operatives understand that an “unrealistic prospect of winning doesn’t mean you can’t influence things.”

“I can tell you that he did not seek me out. Somebody else did,” La Sota said.

While it’s unclear just how West, ostensibly running as an independent, managed to connect almost exclusively with Republican firms—many of which had direct connections to Trump himself—his efforts were quite clearly in the hands of experienced conservatives.

[Kanye West Is Still Team Trump: ‘I Still Got a Red Hat On’

UNCENSORED

Marlow Stern]

There is one major exception, however. The progressive firm Millennial Strategies was one of Kanye’s largest 2020 vendors, and it’s unclear if that was a ploy to give Kanye’s campaign the air of true independence, or just a true exception.

Otherwise, Kanye’s campaign seems to have been loaded with Republican operatives.

At, or at least near, the top of the campaign’s chain was sitting GOP Virginia state senator and veteran political operative Jill Vogel—managing partner at Holtzman Vogel, a heavyweight in the world of conservative politics and dark money groups.

Vogel’s campaign work is made clear in months of email and text communications revealed in a multimillion-dollar breach-of-contract lawsuit targeting the West campaign and consultants, first filed this spring in Texas state court and reviewed by The Daily Beast.

The suit, brought by former campaign subvendor SeedX, alleges the company never got paid for months of campaign work, including building and maintaining the website and merch sales, which are counted for campaign purposes as donations. SeedX backs up those allegations with hundreds of pages of communications with campaign officials and contractors, indicating it engaged in several months of campaign work.

SeedX alleges that because the campaign did not pay them, their work would qualify as either a loan or an in-kind contribution—which would have exceeded limits. However, the campaign failed to acknowledge either in their filings.

“You’re not just going to trip and find your way into these Republican circles.”

— Jordan Libowitz, communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

The case got kicked up to federal court in the Western District of Texas, where a judge dismissed it on Nov. 30, citing lack of jurisdiction—in other words, SeedX filed the lawsuit in the wrong place. The court did not take up the merits of the case, which was closed before it reached the discovery stage, when subpoenas could be issued. A person with direct knowledge told The Daily Beast that the plaintiffs remain confident, and a new lawsuit will likely be filed again soon.

The documents also happen to show that Vogel advised the campaign regarding legal and compliance matters starting as far back as August 2020. The issues ranged from website language and disclaimers to fundraising advice and ballot access rules.

“She is a name that comes up a lot when you’re looking at right-wing money operations in general, tied to a lot of major players,” Libowitz explained. “She and her firm [Holtzman Vogel] have ties to people like [top conservative fundraiser] Leonard Leo, just really big Republican money.”

Libowitz said Vogel may have wanted to keep her name off of filings to minimize “any embarrassment that may come with being publicly affiliated with the trainwreck that was the Kanye campaign,” but added that “it’s also likely that she did not want people to know that a Republican operative was behind his campaign.”

Two people involved with the campaign identified Vogel, whose husband is D.C. lobbyist Alex Vogel, as a key player.One person told The Daily Beast that Jill Vogel was “basically behind it all,” and had been a presence in the campaign since at least last July, when right-leaning lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs was advising the campaign. A third source confirmed her involvement but was unsure of her exact role.

1051894744

Kanye West speaks during a meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval office in Oct. 2018.]

Michael McKeon, a partner at Mercury, confirmed to The Daily Beast that he had worked with Kanye 2020 in its early stages. His role, he said, was to “connect the campaign with various people, groups.” Asked in a follow-up if he had connected the campaign with Vogel, McKeon referred the question to the campaign and ended the conversation.

An email sent to the campaign’s listed email contact bounced back.West’s publicist, Pierre Rougier, did not reply to a detailed request for comment.

But watchdogs strongly doubted that Kanye’s campaign just happened to end up with this many GOP operatives on its team.

“You’re not just going to trip and find your way into these Republican circles,” Libowitz observed. “BakerHostetler works for the Republican National Committee,” he said, referencing a New York firm which Kanye 2020 paid $152,000 a full month after he lost the election.

“So many of these firms work for major Republican organizations, and they are not doing this for him out of the kindness of their hearts,” he added. It appears that well over a dozen Kanye 2020 firms have deep connections in national and state Republican politics, and that many of them pushed false claims of a fraudulent or fatally flawed election. “It’s pretty clear Kanye was a GOP plant, whether he knew it or not.”

[Ye Defends Dave Chappelle: ‘You Can’t Cancel None of Us’

HUH?

Marlow Stern]

Despite the evidence of Vogel’s campaign work in the court records, none of Kanye 2020’s FEC filings show any payments to her or her firm. (Neither Mercury nor McKeon appear, either.) However, Vogel associates herself directly with the campaign in multiple emails found in the court filings, and other campaign vendors identify her several in texts and emails as the “campaign lawyer.”

In one late January email obtained by The Daily Beast, Vogel identifies herself to SeedX as “the attorney for the Kanye West 2020 presidential campaign.” (Emails show she had been in touch with SeedX in this capacity for months.) She then says she has been “authorized” to offer SeedX $20,000 to buy the campaign website, and hints that the vendor—who did months of work but apparently never got paid—could face possible civil litigation if they do not set aside their demands.

SeedX rejected the $20,000 and sued for $2 million, arguing it matched the rates of other vendors.

Attorneys are allowed to volunteer compliance services to campaigns. However, federal law requires campaigns to report what the cost of that work would be. They must also report the name of the person who performed the work.Court exhibits show Vogel used her official firm email account while advising on Kanye 2020.

Libowitz said it is unclear why Vogel, an expert who advised Kanye 2020 on the many nuances of FEC laws—at one point consulting another firm partner, whom she identifies asa former FEC commissioner—decided that she herself did not need to appear in the filings. The matter, he said, raises questions.

“If an outside group was paying for them, that needs to be disclosed as an in-kind contribution, and if that’s the case you would immediately run up against limits,” Libowitz said.

Brendan Fischer, director of federal reform at theCampaign Legal Center, who reviewed the court and FEC records, also questioned the rationale.

“Voters have a right to know where political money is coming from and where it is going. But the Kanye 2020 campaign’s FEC reports didn’t give much insight into who was actually working for the candidate,” Fischer said.

“There are several red flags here that warrant FEC scrutiny.”

— Paul S. Ryan, vice president of government watchdog Common Cause

He noted that while the FEC doesn’t always require campaigns to separately disclose payments to subcontractors, the “subvendor loophole can’t explain all of the giant holes in the Kanye campaign’s FEC reports.”

Ryan, of Common Cause, noted that “if Holtzman Vogel’s legal services extended beyond compliance with federal campaign finance law to other matters, then the value of those services would constitute a potentially-illegal contribution to Kanye’s campaign.”

To that point, one of Vogel’s emails includes a lengthy discussion of ballot requirements in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, which would not appear on its face to be related in any way to FEC compliance.

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}:

“There are several red flags here that warrant FEC scrutiny,” Ryan said.

Interestingly enough, some Vogel money did flow the other way: Her teenage son appears to have donated $180 to Kanye 2020 in October, FEC records show, likely in exchange for any of a number of combinations of Yeezy election swag.

Vogel did not reply to several specific questions about her involvement with the campaign.

Another key operative attached to West’s White House bid, whose involvement had attracted media attention last year, was Nathan Sproul. One of Sproul’s firms was at the center of a voter fraud case in 2012, and another, Lincoln Strategy Group, has since 2008 pulled in more than $10 million in federal political consulting services, according to FEC records—including $600,000 from the Trump campaign weeks ahead of the 2016 election.

Like Vogel, Lincoln Strategy was not reported to have received any money from Kanye 2020. However, one of its principals, longtime GOP political consultant Dan Centinello—who appears regularly on Kanye 2020 text and email chains—contributed $260 to the campaign in October.

[She Went From Repping Kanye to Hyping a QAnon Fan and Trump

FEVER DREAMS

Adam Rawnsley,

Asawin Suebsaeng]

Centinello and Sproul are just two among a number of Lincoln Strategy employees who advised West’s campaign, using official Lincoln Strategy Group email addresses, according to emails and text messages found in court exhibits.

And while Lincoln Strategy did not get paid by Kanye 2020, the campaign did pour about $4.8 million into a firm called “Fortified Consulting.”

At this point, you may not be stunned to learn that “Fortified Consulting” has almost no public footprint. However, it shares an Arizona address with Lincoln Strategy Group, and has been identified in multiple news reports as belonging to Sproul.

No other political committee has ever paid Fortified Consulting.

Over the four months that the firm was raking in its $4.8 million from the “independent” West, its apparent alter ego, Lincoln Strategy Group, was working openly with mainstream Republican clients—including Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), and the Republican Party of Texas. Those clients paid Lincoln a combined $1.1 million over that period.

At one point, Lincoln Strategy employees even discuss buying out West’s campaign merch store after the election—which would be prohibited by law. (The store had problems of its own.)

But legal filings show Sproul, who did not respond to requests for comment, was merely a small visible sprout off the campaign’s far deeper and unseen Republican roots.

[Kanye West’s Presidential Hopes Turn to Dust

ELECTORAL COLLEGE DROPOUT

Tarpley Hitt]

Beginning in August 2020, and stretching through September of this year, Kanye 2020 made nine payments totalling $692,057.35 for “compliance” and “accounting” to a Texas entity called “GSF Inc.” That eye-popping figure came after the hip-hop mogul had lost any hope of attaining the nation’s highest office and, for context, it exceeds what former Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) splashed out for compliance services during his entire failed bid for re-election.

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}:

But business records show that no such company as “GSF Inc.” exists in the Lone Star State, and the FEC database shows no other political committee has ever hired a firm by that name.

However, the database does show that an array of right-wing candidates and committees have paid a company sharing the same address in the suburbs just north of Austin: Grand Slam Finance, Inc. And the Texas lawsuit documents Grand Slam Finance’s extensive involvement in the Kanye 2020 campaign—as well as illustrates how the firm appears to have both facilitated and potentially concealed connections between West’s campaign and the Republican operative network more broadly.

Texas records show that Grand Slam Finance was originally the creation of accountant Russell Anderson, who handled the books for disgraced former House Majority Leader Tom Delay’s political action committee.

But Anderson told The Daily Beast that he sold his stake in Grand Slam Finance to his partner Deanna Hayes “three or four years” ago.

The Texas suit includes among its exhibits emails the plaintiff exchanged with Hayes—identified as an “associate” of Vogel and her firm—as well as correspondence between Hayes and campaign treasurer Andre Bodiford regarding banking information.

“I was hoping we could keep andre out of it but apparently Deanna [Hayes] doesn’t have everything,” Centinello wrote in one message.

[629490050

Kanye West and then-President-elect Donald Trump speak with the press after their meetings at Trump Tower on Dec. 13, 2016.]

It is unclear why Centinello, a self-professed veteran of major multimillion-dollar campaigns, wanted to leave the West campaign’s treasurer out of the loop here.

Notably, the West campaign’s nine payments to GSF add up to about $250,000 more than the firm’s combined federal compliance income over the last decade.

Ryan called it “strange” to see a consultant “suddenly banking way more than it previously has for services, all from one campaign.” And Ryan and Libowitz both made note of West’s status as an “amateur candidate,” and a billionaire who largely funded his own campaign.

Hayes did not reply to requests for comment. However, days after The Daily Beast first contacted her, she sent an apparently errant text, with a reference to a “Jill”—likely Vogel.

“This reporter has been calling and texting. I haven’t answered or responded nor will I. No idea how he got my name or what he wants but now he’s calling my husband. I let Jill know yesterday just so she’s aware,” the text message read. Neither Hayes nor Vogel replied to questions about this text message.

Public records indicate Hayes’ history with Vogel run through another pair of leading GOP apparatchiks.

Lobbying documents in Hawaii show Hayes and Grand Slam working for the Crosby Ottenhoff Group. This firm belongs to former RNC Chief Finance Officer Caleb Crosby and Benjamin Ottenhoff, the treasurer for the GOP’s digital fundraising juggernaut WinRed.

[Kim K: I Regret Telling Kanye to Take His MAGA Hat Off

SEEING RED]

Neither Crosby nor Ottenhoff responded to questions about whether they had also worked for the West campaign.Crosby has a particularly close relationship with Hayes and with Holtzman Vogel: Hayes incorporated his personal firm, CFC Consulting, which also works for marquee Republican names, and handled the books at a conservative nonprofit where Crosby worked as treasurer.

Grand Slam Finance also formerly managed compliance at another institution where Crosby served as fiduciary: Karl Rove’s Super PAC American Crossroads.

The law firm for American Crossroads? Holtzman Vogel PLLC, according to FEC records.

The same is true for the Senate Leadership Fund, a Mitch McConnell-boosting PAC, which also lists Crosby as its treasurer. In fact, the Senate Leadership Fund is only one of several entities based out of Holtzman Vogel’s Virginia law office which feature Crosby as an officer. SEDITION CAUCUS]

Holtzman Vogel and the Crosby Ottenhoff Group have teamed up numerous times in the past few years, most recently for a pair of GOP PACs in Virginia.

West’s self-described “spiritual adviser,” music manager John Boyd—who the campaign paid $25,000 for “political strategy consulting—was adamant that nobody, Republican or Democrat, ever manipulated the hip-hop star. However, he admitted that his campaign was highly disorganized and the candidate was never in full control of his own operations.

“He had companies, individuals working for him, I don’t even know if he knew what they were doing that deeply. That’s my personal view,” Boyd told The Daily Beast. “There were definitely agendas out there that perhaps he didn’t have full control over.”

Boyd declined to give names or provide further details.

Colorado-based attorney Mario Nicolais, who had scrutinized the West campaign’s ballot petition activity in Wisconsin last August, told The Daily Beast that the GOP’s targeting West—who, according to his then-wife Kim Kardashian, had been contending with mental health struggles—was “about as bottom-of-the-barrel moral turpitude as you can be, in my opinion. Just sleazy, low-rent cashing in.”

Nicolais added that it was “important to follow up on these stories,” even a year later, because they could “invite bigger problems in the future, similar tactics only on a larger scale.”

“It turns out that this was not even a conspiracy theory,” he said. “It was literally documented.”

==

ggl 7 22

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New documents show that Kanye West's presidential campaign may have been secretly run by GOP elites. The campaign, styled as an “independent” third-party ...

==

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/wisconsin-ballot-green-party/2020/09/11/797aa4d2-f44a-11ea-bc45-e5d48ab44b9f_story.html

wapo no lnx

Politics

Pending Wisconsin Supreme Court decision on whether to add Green Party ticket to the presidential ballot upends election preparations

An election worker in Milwaukee sorts absentee ballots for Wisconsin's spring primary on April 8.

By

Amy Gardner

September 11, 2020

An imminent Wisconsin Supreme Court decision on whether the Green Party presidential ticket has qualified to appear on the state ballot has upended election preparations and raised the prospect of a last-minute addition that could benefit President Trump in a state he won by a hair in 2016.

The pending court case comes after the Wisconsin Elections Commission declined on Aug. 20 to put presidential contender Howie Hawkins and his Green Party running mate, Angela Walker, on the Nov. 3 ballot because their signature petitions featured two different addresses for Walker. State election officials argued against letting the ticket on the ballot, saying the campaign failed to meet the requirements.

Hawkins and Walker filed a legal petition with the state’s high court, which on Thursday ordered local governments not to send any ballots out until it reaches a decision.

That has left election clerks across the state in limbo. They warned that millions of ballots have already been printed, and cities and towns have begun stuffing and labeling envelopes and preparing to send out more than 1 million ballots that have been requested so far by voters.

Now, local officials may need to order new ballots — and cough up the money to pay for them — while facing imminent state and federal deadlines to send them to voters. The state requires that ballots be sent to voters who have requested them by Sept. 17, and the federal deadline for mailing ballots to overseas and military voters is two days later, Sept. 19.

After those deadlines, local governments must send ballots out on a rolling basis as they receive additional requests, up until the state deadline for requesting a ballot on Oct. 29.

“This is really nuts, honestly,” said Scott McDonell, the clerk in Dane County, who was on the phone with the county’s printing contractor this week in preparation for the ruling and expected his staff to work through the weekend to prepare envelopes, instructions and mailing labels for the arrival of new ballots.

Democrats say they fear that a last-minute change to the ballot will create havoc for election officials and confusion among voters with just weeks to go before the election. There is also the possibility that a Green Party ticket could siphon votes from their nominee, former vice president Joe Biden.

In a state that Trump won by just under 23,000 votes four years ago — less than a percentage point — a third-party candidate could attract a difference-making number of votes. In 2016, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein won more than 30,000 votes in Wisconsin.

Hawkins suggested in an interview that Trump supporters had helped the Green Party ticket with its legal claim before the state Supreme Court. The party’s petition was filed by attorneys from the Milwaukee-based von Briesen & Roper law firm, which has a history of representing Wisconsin Republicans.

“You get help where you can find it,” Hawkins told The Washington Post when asked whether Republicans had financed the legal action. “They have their reasons and we have ours.”

Hawkins’s campaign manager, Andrea Merida, later denied that, saying she “literally used Google” to find a law firm because others had turned her down. She said she doesn’t know the partisan affiliation of donors from Wisconsin supporting the Green Party ticket.

A von Briesen lawyer listed on the court filing, Andrew Phillips, did not respond to a request for comment. The chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, Andrew Hitt, denied any involvement in the effort. A spokesman for the Republican National Committee declined to comment.

Questions about the Green Party ballot petition began in August, when a state voter complained that there was a discrepancy in Walker’s address on the party’s signature pages. The campaign said that Walker had moved during the signature-gathering phase.

But campaign officials failed to respond to a request from the state elections commission to fix their signature sheets, which they could have done by submitting an affidavit explaining the address discrepancy.

In a report to the Wisconsin Elections Commission ahead of its Aug. 20 meeting, the commission’s staff argued that the affidavit would have “easily cleared up confusion” — but absent that, the commission is left with “legitimate arguments” against the petition’s validity.

Weeks later, the Green Party ticket asked the Supreme Court to intervene.

The state Supreme Court is controlled by a 4-to-3 conservative majority that has regularly ruled in favor of Republican interests over the past decade, notably in 2014, when it upheld a law ending collective bargaining for teachers championed by then-Gov. Scott Walker (R).

Wisconsin is one of at least five states where The Post has identified Republicans, including activists who had recently voiced support for Trump, working on an effort to put rapper Kanye West on the ballot. As with the Green Party ticket, the GOP involvement has raised fears among Democrats that West’s candidacy is intended to peel votes from Biden.

In West’s case, Lane Ruhland, a Madison lawyer and former general counsel for the state Republican Party, delivered his ballot petition to state regulators in early August.

Kanye West’s presidential bid bolstered by Republican operatives in at least five states

The commission voted 5-to-1 in August to bar West from the ballot, arguing his petition had been submitted moments after a 5 p.m. deadline on Aug. 4. West challenged that decision in state court. A judge ruled against him Friday night, but the decision is expected to be appealed.

Like other county clerks across Wisconsin, McDonell is now waiting to find out if he must order new ballots.

McDonell and other officials said they were particularly frustrated that the Green Party ticket waited two weeks to ask the state Supreme Court to intervene, especially because the Wisconsin Elections Commission gave the campaign an opportunity to fix the deficient signatures when they were filed.

“If they had just sent an email confirming that they had moved, they would be on the ballot right now,” McDonell said. “We could have added the Green Party and it would have been fine, and that’s not still true today. The fact that the Green Party took two weeks to file — I don’t even know what to say about that.”

Local governments were made aware of the possibility of a ruling on Thursday, when the Supreme Court ordered them not to send out any ballots until it determined whether the Green Party would qualify.

The state elections commission’s online system shows that as many as 378,000 ballots have been mailed by cities and towns, but most local governments reported Friday that they had not actually sent any yet, but were still in the preparatory stages, stuffing envelopes and affixing mailing labels.

A decision for the Green Party would force all counties to print new ballots — an expensive job for the state’s larger jurisdictions but less so for smaller communities. Dane County, for instance, will have to spend around $100,000 to replace its ballots.

McDonell said it would probably take a week for the new ballots to arrive once he orders them, meaning voters will have that much less time to return their ballots by Wisconsin’s Nov. 3 deadline.

That’s significant at a time when the U.S. Postal Service is under fire for recent operational changes, such as a reduction of overtime and limits on mail trips, that have prompted reports of backlogs nationwide.

This week, the Postal Service sent a mailer to postal customers urging them to “start today” on the process of voting by mail, and to mail ballots “at least” seven days before Election Day.

==

AN 820

some Trump allies fear promoting Kanye West’s 2020 bid could backfire: reportCody Fenwick

---

ny mag

at  least two people with links to Kanye West’s nascent presidential campaign are also active in Republican Party politics.

One of West’s electors in the state of Vermont will also be a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Charlotte. Chuck Wilton, one of the three electors West’s presidential campaign named in a filing submitted with the Vermont secretary of State on Monday, was also elected by the Vermont Republican Party in May to serve as a delegate for President Trump at this year’s RNC. (Electors are the people who would – were the candidate to win the state – vote for them in the Electoral College.)

Asked by Intelligencer if he was the same person who was listed as a delegate, Wilton replied, “Yup, that would be me.” He said that he had been involved in politics in Vermont for years, and had been connected to the West campaign “through political contacts.”

“Somebody said that Vermont needs electors for certain people and [it was] something I said that I’m more than willing to do,” Wilton explained. He described himself politically as “conservative libertarian/center right,” adding that he was “not disappointed with [Trump] but wanted to search out some more alternatives to him.” Wilton said that he thought West was “center right” just like him.

The Republican National Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wilton was the second person with ties to the GOP to be linked to the West presidential campaign on Monday. A prominent Republican operative, Gregg Keller, was listed as the campaign’s point of contact in a filing with the Arkansas secretary of State. Keller, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment, is the former executive director of the American Conservative Union and has worked for a number of prominent Republican politicians including Mitt Romney and Josh Hawley.

West has expressed his opposition to abortion on Twitter and at a campaign event in South Carolina last month, and met with Trump wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat at the White House in 2018. He has since backed away from his support for Trump, but did tell *Forbes* in July, “Trump is the closest president we’ve had in years to allowing God to still be part of the conversation.”

West’s campaign has faced a number of stumbles in recent weeks while trying to get the rapper on the ballot this November, but the campaign did successfully file to appear on the ballot in Arkansas, West Virginia, and Vermont on Monday. The signatures he submitted in the first two states still need to be validated. Vermont does not require any petitioning to appear the ballot.

The rapper is also pushing forward with efforts to get on the ballot in **two key swing statesthis week. In Wisconsin, which Donald Trump won by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016, there are 45 people on the ground working to get West on the ballot. He needs to collect and submit at least 2,000 valid signatures in that state by Tuesday evening. In Ohio,West is pushing to collect the 5,000 valid signatures needed to appear on the ballot, which have to be submitted on Wednesday.

His campaign still faces a number of hurdles, including a hearing in New Jersey on Tuesday morning over allegations that signatures submitted to get West on the ballot in the state were forged.

West would need to appear on the ballot in some combination of states totaling 270 electoral votes in order participate in the presidential debates. The Commission on Presidential Debates, the nonpartisan group that has moderated presidential debates since 1988, requires candidates meet that threshold, as well as having at least 15 percent support in opinion polls. West is precariously short of missing the second threshold. And even if he manages to stay on the ballot in every state where he has submitted signatures, the rapper would need to almost run the table for ballot access in the remaining states — and would need to make the ballot in California, which requires nearly 200,000 signatures that must be submitted by Thursday.

The West campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

==

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/gop-operatives-push-to-get-kanye-west-on-the-presidential-ballot-reports/

alex h

In 2018 and 2019, Kanye West was President Donald Trump’s most prominent supporter in the hip-hop community, sometimes inspiring criticism from other rappers who considered the president overtly racist. But on July 4, West tweeted that he planned to run for president — running against Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden in the general election. And according to reporting from the New York Times and CNN, some Republican operatives have been trying to help West get on the presidential ballot in various states.

One of the GOP operatives cited by reporters Maggie Haberman and Danny Hakim in the Times isMark Jacoby, who they describe as “an executive at a company called Let the Voters Decide.” Jacoby, they note, “has been collecting signatures for the West campaign” in Ohio, West Virginia and Arkansas.

Others Republicans named by Haberman and Hakim include Gregg Keller, former executive director of the American Conservative Union, and Chuck Wilton — who they describe as “a convention delegate for Mr. Trump from Vermont” and “an elector with the West operation who could potentially cast an Electoral College vote for Mr. West."

[twt]

dan Merica and Jeff Zeleny of CNN, meanwhile, report that some GOP operatives tied to Trump “are actively helping Kanye West get on presidential general election ballots in states ranging from Vermont to Arkansas to Wisconsin.” And according to the CNN reporters, some Democrats believe that Republicans see West as a possible spoiler who could take African-American votes away from Biden.

“Democrats in Wisconsin and beyond called it a blatant attempt to appeal to young black voters who may be unenthused about the Biden campaign,” Merica and Zeleny report. “Any downturn in turnout for Biden among young black voters, a group the Trump campaign has tried to target in the race against the former vice president, could impact the outcome in states with traditionally narrow margins, like Wisconsin.”

However, Haberman and Hakim report that “if Mr. West’s goal is to disrupt the general election between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, he is going about it in a strange way.”

“Some of the states where he has filed to get on the ballot have been solidly red states, like Arkansas, where his presence would almost certainly do little to change the general election equation,” Haberman and Hakim note. “But other states he is targeting, like Wisconsin, are seen as pivotal.”

In some states, Haberman and Hakim observe, it is too late for West to get on the ballot — as he has missed the filing deadline.

Democratic Rep. David Bowen of Wisconsin described Republican efforts to promote West’s campaign as underhanded, telling CNN: “Thankfully, the Trump team is showing their cards that the real force driving Kanye West to run is not people, but Trump. This is clearly a targeted effort by Republican operatives to cause confusion and problems for typically Democratic voters on Election Day…. It’s sad to see a popular music artist like Kanye be used as a pawn to trick his own people (and) fans to vote for a fake campaign.”

---

==

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/kanye-west-joins-dominionist-pro-trump-prophets-for-stadium-prayer-rally/

Rapper Kanye West announced that he and his Sunday Service choir will take part in Awaken 2020, a prayer rally featuring dominionists Lou Engle, Ché Ahn, Cindy Jacobs and other evangelists that will be held Saturday, Jan. 18 at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. According to one report, West’s announcement sparked such a flood of people registering for free tickets that the event website crashed.

Some religious conservatives believe that West’s highly publicized conversion and his traveling “Sunday Service” will help spark the Great Awakening, a revival that religious-right leaders have been trying to set in motion for years. To them, the Great Awakening is not just about saving souls, but about changing politics and shifting the direction of the nation.

“It’s time for you to be part of the Jesus awakening that is shifting HISTORY,” a website promoting the event reads. “Open the door and enter into a new era, a new decade, of revival that is bringing a movement of signs and wonders, healing of the sick, and preaching of the gospel.”

Like West, many of the rally speakers are ardent supporters of President Donald Trump. Guillermo Maldonado, whose church recently hosted the president at a campaign kickoff for Evangelicals for Trump, has said that **God raised up Trump as part of his End Times plans for America.

Awaken 2020 organizer David Herzog also talks about prophecies for the second coming; he believes God is going to trust this generation to bring great signs and wonders and miracles to America because “the harvest is so ripe, it’s so close, and he’s in a hurry to do this.”

Ché Ahn, head of Harvest International Ministry and a leader of the New Apostolic Reformation, says that “true revival includes the reformation of society.” He has promoted political events organized by Christian nationalist David Lane in an effort to “transform” California. He publicly canceled his subscription to Christianity Today after the magazine editorialized in favor of Trump’s impeachment and removal from office. Ahn is a promoter of Seven Mountains dominionism, which teaches that Satan has had control of many of the “mountains” of influence in society—like government, media, entertainment—and that the right kind of Christians need to take control over them. Ahn has talked about the importance of Christians being in charge of the mountain of government so that “we can make decrees and declarations and we can influence that whole mountain.” Ahn, an ardent opponent of LGBTQ equality, co-founded The Call, which organized a series of large-scale political prayer rallies, with Lou Engle.

The Call co-founder, dominionist Lou Engle, has been promoting Awaken 2020, which he said in a promotional video will “open up the dawning of a new day” that could “change history.” Engle teaches that “the church’s vocation is to rule history with God.” He has used his prayer events to call for an end to abortion in America, to mobilize resistance to LGBTQ equality, and to ask God to “remove” pro-choice Supreme Court justices so that President Donald Trump can replace them with justices who will eliminate a right to abortion. In a video promoting Awaken 2020, Engle recalled prophesying at a 1997 event in Sun Devil Stadium that the stadium would be filled, a prophesy that he said was the beginning of The Call. In his own video promoting Awakening 2020, Ahn went back even further and described a 1995 event at which he said two young people prophesied the arrival of “stadium Christianity.”

“Prophet” Cindy Jacobs teaches that there is an imperative to “disciple nations.” On the eve of the 2018 midterms elections, she declared, “We’re going to put people in office that are going to believe that government needs to be upon his shoulders,” adding, “The government of God must be established.” Like Engle, Jacobs is a member of the council of POTUS Shield, a network created on the night of Trump’s election victory to support his presidency. Both she and Engle were part of a spiritual warfare event held at Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., in February 2018, at which she told her fellow warriors, “We are God’s enforcers in the Earth for His will to be done.” She, too, is a strong opponent of legal abortion and legal equality for LGBTQ people. Last year, Jacobs warned that the proposed Equality Act, which would expand federal civil rights laws to include protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation of gender identity, becomes law, “Christians will rise up” and “we would even come to a place of civil war.” In 2017, Jacobs told a gathering that God wants Christians to become so wealthy it will make Jews jealous, sparking a “great harvest” of Jewish conversions. In 2018, she said, “There’s a reason God brought so many Asians to California. The Lord told us that it was like a hidden weapon, the Asians were like a hidden weapon that God wanted to use to turn the elections.” Jacobs has teamed up with White House aide Paula White for the One Voice Prayer Movement, which launched in November with a prayer call on which White prayed against demonic efforts to undermine Trump.

Awaken 2020 is one of many large-scale tent-and-stadium prayer events being organized by religious-right leaders this year in hopes of sparking evangelical activism and a spiritual revival that will lead to reformation of the church and transformation of society.

Tags: Che AhnCindy JacobsDavid HerzogGuillermo MaldonadoKanye WestLou EngleAwakening 2020DominionismElection 2020New Apostolic ReformationSeven MountainsAwakening 2020Harvest International MinistryThe Call

---

https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/democracy-in-the-2010s-the-decline-of-kanye-west-ern-civilization/

no lnx

Democracy in the 2010s: The decline of Kanye West-ern civilization

Written by Melanie McFarland / Salon December 23, 2019

At some point nearly at the beginning of November, an as-yet-unidentified prankster replaced a photo of Uncle Ruckus from “The Boondocks” with a picture of Kanye West wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat. Twitter responded with a tidal wave of ROFLMAO emojis at the subtlety of this commentary; you could only find it if you Googled “Boondocks characters,” something few people would have done for any series that’s been off the air for more than five years.

But the gag said everything without a caption. Ruckus is a symbol of self-hatred and ignorance, a caricature of willful, inwardly directed racist degradation.

It’s no accident that the cartoon version of Ruckus bears a slight physical resemblance to Clarence Thomas, but in mindset he’d also find kinship with Herman Cain, Ben Carson . . . and according to some enterprising joke vigilante, Kanye.

In the proximate past, the gag makes sense. This is end-of-the-decade Kanye. Possibly even End Times Kanye. This version visited the Oval Office to deliver an adulatory rant in praise of Donald Trump, tweeted in support of conservative wingnut Candace Owens, and lately has thrown in with prosperity gospel charlatan Joel Osteen, telling his fans that merch sales count as tithing.

How easy it is to forget that, biologically speaking, this is the same man who in 2005 went off-script during an NBC fundraising telethon for Hurricane Katrina relief, leaving presenting partner Mike Myers utterly speechless.

I’m talking about the Kanye who stared into the camera and told America, “I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they’re looting. You see a white family, it says they’re looking for food.” He goes on to passionately ramble for a bit about his own shortcomings before delivering the famous line, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

Remember that Kanye? “Down for the people” Kanye? What happened to him? The same thing that happened to all of us: the decade that began with 2010.

All art that stands the test of time is informed by the social and political shifts with which it moves, hence the everlasting frustration that is Kanye West, a man who began his career as a hip-hop artist and has since styled his life to be part of the artist palette, much to our fascination and revulsion.

Ten years after that landmark moment Kanye would grace one of five covers to commemorate Time’s 100 Most Influential People accompanied by a blurb written by Elon Musk, a tech titan who as it turns out doesn’t exactly have the best track record with black people either.

The Kanye of 2015 is dramatically different from 2005 Kanye – as different, in fact, as 2010 Kanye is from the 2019 model, i.e. the “come-to-Yeezus” performer who declared before Osteen’s congregation, “The greatest artist that God has ever created is working for him.”

Over the last decade Kanye evolved to become a fashion influencer, brand-defining entrepreneur, an all-American hustler-turned-huckster. Now he’s the guy who got on Twitter to beg Mark Zuckerberg for a moment in the name of bringing “dope sh*t to the world,” the black guy who will happily pose in photos for white dudes who need a picture that proves they have a black friend.  Looking at him thusly makes his late registration to the #MAGA tribe a predictable element of his strange progression.

But as we look back over the last 10 years or so, we had to wonder how closely Kanye’s evolution mirrors that of our political culture. Had we been paying attention to the subliminal messaging underneath the nutty bluster, could we had been better prepared to head off the political and social breaking point at which we find ourselves? Spoiler alert: Lord no. But let’s look back anyway.

2010-2012 and “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”

One line from Season 1 of Comedy Central’s “South Side” basically sums up the general feeling about the Chicago-born rapper. “I could kill that man!” a frustrated worker spits through her teeth, adding more quietly, “ But I could also kill for that man.”

No doubt these days many more people agree with the first statement than the second – but if the latter sentiment holds true at all anymore it is largely due to the resilience of Kanye’s fifth album as an extraordinary work, even a decade after its release.

The Best Rap Album winner at the 54th Grammy Awards is still considered by many critics to be one of the best albums of all time due to its sensational production value, but also due to the thread of reflection throughout the ostentatious and boastful lyrics about the emptiness of excess and fame.

Think of where we were in 2010, when the recession had ended but the average person wasn’t feeling any financial lift, while Wall Street was getting bailouts. Behind the lyrics about partying thrummed a disillusionment at the state of a world that delivered America its first black president, only to saddle him with a financial crisis that made promises of hope and change impossible to deliver upon.

“My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” is very much a self-portrait and, like his other albums, a gloriously indulgent one. At the same time, tracks like “Power” acknowledge the absurdity of his good fortune in the midst of a time when the unemployment rate hovered at around 9.6 percent. Then came 2011, when a record number of restrictions to voting introduced in state legislatures around the country, many of which have histories of voter discrimination.

“The system broken, the school’s closed, the prisons open/We ain’t got nothing’ to lose, ma-f**ka’, we rolling,” he raps on “Power,” “Huh? Ma’f**ka’, we rollin’/ With some light-skinned girls and some Kelly Rowlands/ In this white man’s world, we the ones chosen.”

The setbacks suffered by the many weren’t necessarily being felt by the few, and this is Kanye embracing the essence of the cold life lesson.

HIs libertine homages to opulence extend through his 2011 collaboration with Jay-Z, “Watch the Throne,” a mutual ego-massage that bounced in the background to the 2012 election’s run-up, a test of America’s faith in a black president who endured birtherism smears perpetuated by then-reality TV host Trump.

Incidentally, one of the main themes of “Watch the Throne” concerns the weight of wealth, power and celebrity upon black men, and how these apparent boons also make them the focus of unwanted attention.

Also incidentally, 2011 happened to be year that President Barack Obama famously skewered Trump’s ego at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on the same night he would authorize the Navy Seal operation that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden. And in 2012, Obama repeated on the record his previously expressed opinion that Kanye is a jackass.

2012-2016: The age of Kimye and being blinded by the lights

While it seems that Kanye and Kim Kardashian West have been a celebrity chimera since the dawn of civilization, they only began in 2012 while Kardashian West was still legally married to NBA player Kris Humphries. Kimye had their first child in 2013; the year also brought the inspired bombast of “Yeezus” and the tour to match.

Kardashian West and West married in 2014, in a private, celebrity-studded ceremony in Florence, Italy. The following year brought the successful launch of his lucrative Yeezy fashion collaboration with Adidas. But the merger that matters most to the public dialogue is that of a rap star’s celebrity DNA with that of a reality TV star. In the public’s eye they represented everything we love and loathe about celebrity, particularly as Kim’s social media presence exploded.

It’s around this time period that Kanye really started to lose the thread, as did America. For 2014 also marked the year of the Ferguson uprising sparked by the shooting of Michael Brown. Subsequent investigation by the Justice Department, uncovered a long-standing pattern of a militarized law enforcement system targeting poor and largely black communities to squeeze revenue out of them by imposing needless fines.

But this also occurred in the context of a highly polarized political atmosphere and a midterm election that turned all of Congress over to Republicans, the result of the lowest voter turnout in 70 years. This turn on the national stage set up what happened in 2016 in an important way; but the public was too entranced with the rise of social media and immediate access to unfiltered celebrity.

If Kardashian West focused on cheesecake stunts to break the internet, her husband became the master of antagonizing nonsensical beefs or taking stances that seem wildly unpopular, seemingly for the attention. One destined to go down in the Oddballs Hall of Fame is his series of 2016 tweeted pleas to Silicon Valley billionaires to “invest 1 billion dollars into Kanye West ideas.” He then chastised them for wanting to build schools in Africa instead of funding his “dope” projects.

2016-2020: Prosperity Gospel of Kanye, aka Bringing the Ruckus

This is post-Trump descending the golden escalator, but pre-Trump upending the expectations that the 2016 election would turn out as many expected, and the lesser of two evils would prevail. Somehow we all hypnotized ourselves into thinking the right was on the fringe, not taking over.

But, no. The much greater evil won — the loud, crass, misogynistic, racist reality show host everyone underestimated. Surely Kanye saw much in common with Trump and so, on November 18, 2016, when he told fans during his show that he didn’t vote, but if he did he would have voted for Trump, we should have seen it coming.

Because Kanye 2005, the rapper who made Middle America’s middle class comfortable enough to buy his albums and play his tracks on their stations, was never going to be Public Enemy or KRS-One or any version of a hip-hop star with political fire in his belly. Therefore, despite what you see in that legendary Katrina benefit video he was never entirely comfortable with throwing in with drowning people . . . unless it somehow profited his image. Just as Trump was never successful at being a businessman, until he could massively profit off of the televised fictional version of him that hoodwinked America into believing he was.

America bought what both of them were selling because each spent the decade priming the market.

So even in 2018, after Kanye rebranded himself as a “free thinker,” tweeted photos of himself wearing a MAGA hat or dropped by TMZ just to say hi and tell the viewers at home that slavery was a choice, people still bought his albums.

Even after his famous post-taping rant on “Saturday Night Live” where he took over the stage and yelled, “They say I’m in the sunken place . . . Follow your heart and stop following your mind,” people still praise him.

Even after that Oval Office visit in 2018 and this year, when his reputation hit Uncle Ruckus status and his record “Jesus Is King” was released to a mixed critical reception, it became the first to ever top the Billboard 200, Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, Top Rap Albums, Top Christian Albums, and Top Gospel Albums all at once.

People still forked over $55 for one of his Sunday Service branded brunches . . . consisting of, as described by Consequence of Sound,  “a Styrofoam plate of lukewarm pancakes, bacon, sausage, and grits.” How could they expect anything else?

That said, although Kanye professes to share the same “dragon energy” as Trump, he’s also savvy enough to cut bait when the ship is sinking.  In the same week that Christianity Today released an editorial calling for Trump’s removal from office, Kanye announced his opera “Mary” would be opening at Lincoln Center‘s David Geffen Hall on Sunday, Dec. 22.  He has demonstrated genius levels of creativity in the past, and working with his artistic collaborator Vanessa Beecroft may ensure some additional cohesiveness in its execution.

Trump’s reputation may be shot after this decade, along with the democratic norms we previously took for granted. But Kanye’s will likely remain in a number of people’s good books well past 2020 no matter what he does and who he abandons in order to do it.

On the flipside, Kardashian West channeled her husband’s support and her own celebrity to persuade Trump to grant clemency to Alice Marie Johnson, a grandmother who was serving a life sentence without parole for non-violent drug offenses, and support her criminal justice reform advocacy efforts. So at least as we head into 2020, one member of the West family still cares about justice and black people . . . even if sometimes her attention isn’t always welcome.

In even better news: “The Boondocks” is coming back in 2020 — and this time, appropriately to our era, Ruckus is the star.

Melanie McFarland is Salon’s TV critic. Follow her on Twitter: @McTelevision.

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AN

...Circumstances, upbringing, criminal record, character—when we think about a single person’s story, predicament and mother, he becomes humanized. Not so when someone is a one-in-a-million nobody like the globally countless unrecognized victims of injustice or war.

Charged with getting up in someone’s face and violently mixing it up, we learned about A$AP Rocky’s background, music and that he knows Kanye West and his wife, Kim Kardashian. West has friends in high places and is immediately put through the White House switchboard. The result? A real person gets vouchsafed by POTUS.

President Trump took 20 minutes to talk to Sweden’s prime minister and to make the case for A$AP Rocky—his real name is Rakim Mayers and hails from Harlem. Growing up, Mayers was a teenage crack dealer living in homeless shelters. His dad was a drug dealer who died when Mayers was 12, his brother was also killed. Tough upbringing. But he broke out of poverty by rapping his way to fame, stepping onto stages and back-beating his edgy lyrics to a hungry and, sometimes, angry crowd.Trump found an offbeat way to show compassion, exercise power, and attempt to counter charges he is a racist during a week when he attacked the patriotism of four congresswomen of color. He got to know A$AP Rocky and humanize this one individual, who is now in the political spotlight.

...

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Kanye West makes an exit from ‘Blexit’ 

Kanye West's bromance with President Donald Trump might be over. West, the controversial rapper who has become one of Trump's highest-profile celebrity supporters, said he has become a political pawn. "I’ve been used to spread messages I don’t believe in," West tweeted. His latest revelation came after a series of tweets where West sought to clear his name after the “Blexit” campaign revealed a line of shirts and hats that tout, "Design by Kanye West." "Blexit" is short for "Black Exit," urging black voters to leave the Democratic Party. "I never wanted any association with Blexit,” West said.

==

... usatoday

The incident drew her to conservative outlets she'd formerly cast off as fringe, like Breitbart.com.

She also started exploring the writings of black conservatives, such as Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Like Owens, Sowell has alleged liberal attempts to stifle free speech on college campuses. He slammed the "liberal media" in a column for the conservative National Review in late 2016 regarding Trump's picks for top White House positions.

"They would be worried about anyone who has not been brainwashed in the political correctness that reigns among the intelligentsia," he wrote.

Juan Williams: Donald Trump has black cheerleaders. But what he really needs are tough lessons on race.

Opinion: White people, just mind your business and let people of color exist

Out of her self-immersion in conservative  media and black conservatism came a new outlook, which Owens describes like a calling.

"I want to make a difference," she said. "I want people t know my story so that they know that it can be their story, that they’re in control of their own destiny."

To do that, she'd use a 21st Century technique to push the ideas of Sowell and others to a social media crowd.

"I said, ‘How can I bring that message that they’re saying so brilliantly to a wider audience?" she said. "'Oh, I’m like a millennial. I can do a YouTube channel. I’m hilarious.'"

YouTube to Fox to Kanye

Owens began making a series of YouTube videos in July 2017. Her first post features her "coming out" as a conservative to her parents, who are aghast at the news. All characters are played by Owens. In her most watched video, with 1.6 million views, she mocks a list of demands Black Lives Matter made of white people.

The videos kickstarted a new career as a conservative commentator, earning her airtime on Fox and, eventually, West's attention. When he tweeted about her in April, she reacted like a fan, not the collaborator she is now.

"Please take a meeting with me," she tweeted to West just minutes later. "I tell every single person that everything that I have been inspired to do, was written in your music."

@kanyewest

I love the way Candace Owens thinks

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Days later she appeared with West on TMZ,when he made his remarks about slavery. West drew widespread condemnation for his comments – including from other celebrities, like Stevie Wonder and Kobe Bryant – and later apologized.

But former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, another black Republican, defended him.

“People ought to be able to express their views,” she said. “Not all of us have to think politically the same way. I’ve said to people sometimes, ‘You know, I’ve been black all my life. You don’t have to tell me how to be black.’”

Not long after TMZ, Owens visited Trump at the White House.

Candace Owens

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@RealCandaceO

This is the greatest President of our lifetime.

As a matter of fact, not opinion.

The honor was truly mine, @realDonaldTrump.  #MAGA #KeepAmericaGreat

Owens doesn't think she's treated differently in conservative media because of her race, but does suggest there is a "sense of relief" with her in the fold.

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https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2018/10/watch-this-mashup-showing-charlie-kirk-praising-trump-loving-kanye-and-trashing-democrat-supporting-swift/

Charlie Kirk is a far right wing activist and Donald Trump Jr. BFF. So it's no surprise that late last month, one day after Trump-loving rapper Kanye West showed up on "Saturday Night Live" to proclaim his support for America's racist and misogynistic president, Kirk took to Fox News to applaud him for it.

Calling it an "amazingly profound cultural moment" and congratulating West for his "courage," Kirk said, "What I love about Kanye West is that he has been blazing this trail, saying it's OK to think freely, it's OK to oppose the status quo and in fact what makes America the greatest country in the world is free-thinking."

(That's not exactly what West was saying, but, oh well!)

Fast forward just one week.

Taylor Swift breaks her long-time political silence to slam far right wing extremist Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, who is running for the U.S. Senate seat from Swift's home state of Tennessee.

“I cannot vote for someone who will not be willing to fight for dignity for ALL Americans, no matter their skin color, gender or who they love,” Swift said on Instagram, as The Daily Beast notes. "I believe in the fight for LGBTQ rights, and that any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is WRONG. I believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country towards people of color is terrifying, sickening and prevalent," she added.

Enter Charlie Kirk again. Kirk founded the conservative college student organization Turning Point USA with big-time cash from GOP donor Foster Friess. Friess and Ginni Thomas (a far right wing actvist who happens to be the spouse of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas) sit on TPUSA's board.

“This is what I used to love about Taylor Swift,” Kirk said on Fox News. “She stayed away from politics—she was all about music all about, you know, female empowerment.”

“I don't want to accuse her of this, but I don’t think she's the only one who wrote that post on Instagram. She probably got some very bad information,” he insisted. “Look Taylor Swift, I love your music, personally, Kanye West, I'm a bigger fan of his. I wish you would have not done this. Stay away from politics.”

Watch this amazing mashup The Daily Beast put together of Kirk's Kanye-Swift hypocrisy.

RELATED:

TRUMP-SUPPORTING KANYE WEST CLARIFIES HIS TWEET SAYING HE WANTS TO ‘ABOLISH’ AMENDMENT BANNING SLAVERY

WATCH: TRUMP-LOVING KANYE WEST SAYS SLAVERY WAS ‘A CHOICE’ – GETS SLAMMED FOR ‘ABSENCE OF THOUGHT’

TRUMP DRAWS FIRE FOR CLAIMING TOO BUSY TO HOLD PRESS CONFERENCE ON BUSINESS CONFLICTS WHILE MEETING WITH KANYE WEST

KANYE WEST: ‘I HAVE DECIDED IN 2020 TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT’ (VIDEO)

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/video-reveals-trump-loving-activist-candace-owens-suggesting-hitlers-plans-for-germany-were-fine-the-real-problem-is-globalism/

In a video posted on Twitter Friday by Media Matters for America’s John Whitehouse, right-wing activist Candace Owens shared disturbing comments about her views on nationalism and Adolf Hitler.

The video showed an event discussed in a BuzzFeed News article published Friday. It reported that the event, at which she was joined by fellow fan of President Donald Trump and founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, was held in December.

During the event, Owens was asked about her views of nationalism.

“I actually don’t have any problems at all with the word ‘nationalism.’ I think that the definition gets poisoned by elitists that actually want globalism. Globalism is what I don’t want,” she said. “Whenever we say nationalism, the first thing people think about, at least in America, is Hitler. You know, he was a national socialist.”

She continued: “But if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine. The problem is that he wanted, he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German. Everybody to look a different way. To me, that’s not nationalism. In thinking about how we could go bad down the line, I don’t really have an issue with nationalism. I really don’t.”

Of course, Hitler is famously one of history’s most horrendous dictators whose plan to “make Germany great” involved committing genocide internal to the country, not just outside its boundaries. This was driven by his nationalism — which Owens says she has no problem with — a monstrous view of what it meant to be German and who the nation’s enemies were. And the fact that she so carelessly dismisses this vicious part of the ideology is a perfect example of why those defending supposedly new versions of nationalism should not be taken seriously.

...

==

Trump all day’: Kanye West is back with his irreverent and bizarre political commentary — after saying he’d left it behind

A few weeks after his meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office in October, Kanye West declared that he was “distancing myself from politics” and would be “completely…

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hmmn, correlation is not cause?

11.02.18

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-propaganda-veterans-push-candace-owens-blexit-campaign

no lnx

We’re not saying that Russia helped make #Blexit trend, but Twitter accounts with a history of pushing Kremlin fake news are playing a disproportionate role in amplifying the call for African-American voters to hop on the Trump Train.

Blexit, the brainchild of right-wing personality Candace Owens, is a nascent movement meant to urge black voters to leave the Democratic Party.

Owens, the communications director for campus conservative group Turning Point USA, announced the campaign last Saturday at a Turning Point conference in Washington. But while Blexit is less than a week old, it’s already been beset with controversies.Owens initially claimed that rapper Kanye West, who praised her politics earlier this year on Twitter, designed Blexit’s “X” logo and the 90’s-style colors of its merchandise. But West claimed in a series of tweets Tuesday that he had nothing to do with Blexit, distancing himself from Owens and her group. Owens eventually apologized to West, but insisted that Blexit will continue.

Additionally, a pre-existing organization also called Blexit is threatening to sue over Owens’ use of the name. (Owens didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story)

Despite the hiccups, the torrent of tweets pushing the Blexit hashtag on Twitter gives the impression that African-Americans are rejecting the Democratic party in droves. Over 15 hours ending Friday afternoon, the Daily Beast captured more than 250,000 tweets amplifying the Blexit movement.

“40,000, or16 percent, of the Blexit tweets we collected came from accounts that previously pushed Kremlin propaganda.”

...

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kanye West Just Turned His Back on Trump in the Most Public Way Possible: 'I've Been Used'

==

5 Most Insane Things Kanye West Told Donald Trump During Their Free-Wheeling Oval Office Meeting

i'm w/ her did not work, but maga hat felt like superman

talk prison reform?

==

horo ucsc: i know all is pol corr; take it from me, i was raised by commies, invent by Mao, greatest murdered; my parent say do not deviate from party line, not cute; waited 30 years, bootheels on necks of inner city blks; it wd take blk leader to break, and candace and kanye west, very courageous and accomplished; left are bullies, went after his adidas contract; if you do, i will take my fans of adidas and they backed down; his new album top 7 on spotify, so greAT WAR going on, earthshaking conseq if blk ppl take back __ mccarthyism call race traitor, it cd be great change;

==

no lnx

What to know about Scott Adams and Candace Owens, the right-wing commentators Kanye West promoted

Blog ››› April 24, 2018 1:29 PM EDT ››› CRISTINA LóPEZ G.

Sarah Wasko / Media Matters

Rapper Kanye West promoted two pro-President Donald Trump figures in the span of a few days. On April 21, West praised Candace Owens, a far-right YouTuber who, among other things, has called for all Dreamers, people protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, to “be sent home.”

KANYE WEST

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@kanyewest

I love the way Candace Owens thinks

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And on April 23, West tweeted out in nine parts aPeriscope session by Scott Adams, Dilbert comic strip creator and prominent Trump supporter, during which Adams praised West for “alter[ing] reality.”

KANYE WEST

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@kanyewest

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The far-right MAGA internet erupted in cheers, taking the tweets as evidence of West’s definitive “red pilling,” a term that far-right trolls co-opted from the movie The Matrix and that refers to “seeing things as they really are.” (The MAGA trolls popularized the term during the 2016 election cycle to refer to adopting the sort of contrarianism that denies the benefits of feminism and refuses to acknowledge the need for social justice.)

It is unclear to what extent West aligns with these pro-Trump personalities. But it is undeniable that his endorsement elevated the profiles of these two figures who have espoused toxic positions.

Candace Owens

Owens built an online presence on Twitter and YouTube (where she used to go by “Red Pill Black”) through her commentary on race and politics.However, what launched her to prominence among MAGA trolls was a video she posted after the white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA, last summer in which she dismissed white supremacy as a narrative created by the media, minimizing the extremism displayed at the rally and the violent death of a woman who was protesting the white nationalists. It earned her an invitation on Infowars, Alex Jones’ conspiracy theory outlet, where she talked with Paul Joseph Watson and Jones about the myth of “black-on-black” crime and likened Black Lives Matter protesters to animals:

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Owens burst onto the scene recently afterKanye West praised her way of thinking. She is the communications director for Turning Point USA, a group for young pro-Trump supporters that once staged a protest where members all wore diapers.

Owens made more noise this week when she blasted the #MeToo movement, claiming it was a witch hunt on men. Unbelievably, she also claimed that she talked to CEOs and men in politics, who told her that they were not hiring women. While normal people would be outraged by the admission of illegal hiring practices, Owens used it as a reason to attack #MeToo.

Owens' comments even received criticism from conservative women who pointed out that her rhetoric is damaging to survivors and victims. And that's not the only criticism coming from the right. A competing group for young conservatives wrote a memo calling out Turning Point as damaging. In return, Turning Point seems to have leaked information to a host at Alex Jones' Infowars who Owens has recently praised.

Also: Turning Point held a conference for women. It was full of sexists.

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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/04/why-kanyes-rightward-turn-matters.html

no lnx pix

Why Kanye’s Rightward Turn Matters

By OSITA NWANEVU

APRIL 23, 20186:14 PM

LOS ANGELES, CA - FEBRUARY 17:  Kanye West onstage at adidas Creates 747 Warehouse St. - an event in basketball culture on February 17, 2018 in Los Angeles, California.  (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for adidas)

Kanye West in Los Angeles on Feb. 17.

Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

The alt-right in this country has been reeling since August, when the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, erupted in violence that ended with the death of one young counterprotester. Since then, nearly every week brings another obituary for the reactionary wave that carried Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopoulos to national prominence. But the ideologically adjacent infrastructure of new voices on the cultural right is still thriving and growing. Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychologist and a glorified motivational speaker given to babbling about “dragons of chaos” and tangents about how wearing makeup is an invitation to be sexually pestered, is one of the year’s biggest publishing successes and is currently on a cross-country lecture tour that will put him in venues that more typically host major rock acts. But the Peterson juggernaut may soon have megawatt competition. Over the weekend, Kanye West wrote a series of elliptical tweets on his current mindset.

KANYE WEST

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@kanyewest

all you have to be is yourself

11:34 AM - Apr 20, 2018

KANYE WEST

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@kanyewest

everything is so planned these days. People appreciate spontaneity and honesty.

12:32 PM - Apr 20, 2018

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KANYE WEST

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@kanyewest

strive for universal consciousness not segregated consciousness

12:46 PM - Apr 20, 2018

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West later tweeted that he is a fan of Turning Point USA’s Candace Owens, who made a protested appearance at UCLA on Friday, and offered some evidence that he agrees with her commentary.

KANYE WEST

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@kanyewest

I love the way Candace Owens thinks

7:15 AM - Apr 21, 2018

KANYE WEST

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@kanyewest

Constantly bringing up the past keeps you stuck there

11:44 AM - Apr 22, 2018

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KANYE WEST

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@kanyewest

there was a time when slavery was the trend and apparently that time is still upon us. But now it's a mentality.

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@kanyewest

self victimization is a disease

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Turning Point USA is a conservative youth group dedicated to fighting back against the purportedly perpetual crisis of liberal indoctrination and political correctness on American college campuses. It is perhaps best known for a protest of safe spaces conceived by their chapter at Kent State, in which one member—in a diaper and sucking on a pacifier—romped around campus to make a point that probably seemed clearer on paper. The diaper was presumably high-end—the group takes in many millions in donations. Much of that funding has recently gone toward helping conservative students win campus elections.

Candace Owens is one of the group’s leading activists and speakers. Most of her material is shopworn conservative rhetoric on black Americans: Black people with concerns about how racism past and present shapes their realities—the kind of black people who might have been troubled by TPUSA’s national field director texting to a colleague “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE … fuck them all”—are backward. Black people who dismiss and ignore racism—those who argue that racism in America is largely over, anyway—are, by contrast, real go-getters. “There is an ideological civil war happening,” she said at the UCLA event. “Black people that are focused on their past and shouting about slavery, and black people that are focused on their futures, OK? That’s really what it comes down to.”

The episode is yet another example of how far we are through the looking glass: A man who criticized the then–sitting president by saying he “doesn’t care” about black people on national television in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is, in the topsy-turvy world of 2018, a cheerleader for a pundit who thinks black people ought to quit whining. This has been distressing to many of his fans. It has thrilled all the wrong people. “It is hard to put into words how significant and powerful this endorsement from Kanye is!!” a weekend email from TPUSA read. “When pop icons like Kayne start to compliment leaders like Candace, you know there is a sea change happening in America. Please consider a tax deductible gift today to help us WIN THE FIGHT!!!”

TPUSA head Charlie Kirk took the gushing to social media.

Charlie Kirk

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@charliekirk11

Today @kanyewest had some incredible words to say about the amazing @RealCandaceO

8:34 AM - Apr 21, 2018

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Charlie Kirk

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@charliekirk11

And this is why I call @RealCandaceO the chosen one

KANYE WEST

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@kanyewest

I love the way Candace Owens thinks

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West has also been applauded by InfoWars’ Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones himself. He’s gotten kind words too from Pizzagate conspiracy theorist and Gorilla Mindset author Mike Cernovich, who actually began tweeting praise for a tangent about breaking free of a “simulation” well before West mentioned Owens.

Mike Cernovich ????

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@Cernovich

Kanye on the Simulation, told you, people are waking up, Energy is changing.

KANYE WEST

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@kanyewest

everyone will say he needs to learn how to act. At home parental acting classes are one of the first steps to us loosing who we really are to "the simulation".  Parents are our first acting coaches.

9:16 AM - Apr 18, 2018

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99 people are talking about this

On Monday, West, presumably beaming, tweeted clips of a laudatory Periscope broadcast about him from Dilbert creator Scott Adams, who generally busies himself these days with men’s rights activism and attempts to hypnotize readers of his blog to orgasm. “It feels like there’s something big happening,” he said. “And I think a framework to see this big happening stuff is that people are breaking out of what I call their mental prisons.”

The business of helping right-curious folks break out of their “mental prisons” is booming. Hacks and quacks have long been central to right-wing politics, as the historian Rick Perlstein documented in his 2012 piece for the Baffler, “The Long Con.” But the cast of grifters peddling everything from “vitality” supplements to idiot mysticism is expanding. However dubious the political fortunes of the new far right might be, it clearly has legs as a subculture—one sizable enough, now, to have captured the attention of one of the most important figures in superstardom.

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Why Kanye West Endorsed Candace Owens - NYMag

nymag.com/selectall/2018/04/why-kanye-west-endorsed-candace-owens.html

1.

Apr 23, 2018 - Let's unpack what Kanye West's been doing on Twitter, rubbing elbows ... his meeting with president-elect Donald Trump after the 2016 election. ... West issued an endorsement of right-wing Twitter celeb Candace Owens.

Missing: adidas ‎| ‎Must include: ‎adidas

Kanye West says 'I love Donald Trump', likes how Candace Owens ...

https://www.independent.co.uk › Culture › Music › News

1.

Apr 24, 2018 - Kanye West has reportedly doubled down on his support of Donald Trump, telling radio DJ Ebro he "loves" the president during a heated ...

Missing: adidas ‎| ‎Must include: ‎adidas

YouTube tested, Trump approved: How Candace Owens suddenly ...

https://www.nbcnews.com/.../youtube-tested-trump-approved-how-candace-owens-su...

1.

6 days ago - Candace Owens has rapidly emerged as one of the leading faces of the ... Shortly after, rapper Kanye West tweeted, “I love the way Candace Owens thinks.” .... Dressed in a starched white button-down shirt and Adidas track ...

Kanye West Loves The Way Candace Owens "Thinks"; Azealia Banks ...

https://www.hotnewhiphop.com › Music

1.

 Rating: 1.4 - ‎14 votes

Apr 21, 2018 - Kanye West Loves The Way Candace Owens "Thinks"; Azealia ... that Candace is a "lover of toxic masculinity" who thinks Donald Trump "isn't ...

Liberal Activists Target Kanye West's Adidas Sponsorship | The Daily ...

dailycaller.com/2018/05/03/kanye-west-adidas-yeezy-sponsorship/

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May 3, 2018 - Liberal Activists Target Kanye West's Adidas Sponsorship ... his support for President Donald Trump and conservative activist Candace Owens.

Kanye West on Slavery: '400 Years? That Sounds Like a Choice ...

https://www.complex.com/music/2018/05/watch-kanye-west-talk-slavery-tmz-live

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May 1, 2018 - Kanye West appeared on the latest episode of 'TMZ Live' with 'TMZ' founder ... Doing TMZ live with Harvey and Candace Owens pic.twitter.com/yoZdHwpdis ... He added: "So many rappers [used to] love Trump, but then he get .... Pusha T Hypes Up His Latest Album & Breaks Down His Latest adidasCollab.

Why Kanye's rightward turn matters.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/04/why-kanyes-rightward-turn-matters.html

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Apr 23, 2018 - KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 20, 2018. West later tweeted that he is a fan of Turning Point USA's Candace Owens, who made a protested ...

Candace Owens' Moment: I'm Not Far Right, I'm Free [Updated ...

www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/04/candace-owens-moment.php

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Apr 22, 2018 - Yesterday morning, Kanye West tweeted his approval of Candace: ... Reportedly, Adidas is contemplating canceling West's shoe contract.

Kanye West's Trump tweets, explained as best they can be - Vox

https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/.../kanye-west-donald-trump-tweets-kim-kardashia...

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May 2, 2018 - Kanye West and President Trump's Twitter lovefest, explained .... He has had kind words to say about Candace Owens, a leader of the ...

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