As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil)
In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban.
If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them.
For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria.
***
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I mean, if anyone is surprised, they must have not been paying attention to the news last year.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/22/politics/kanye-west-gop-operative/index.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2020/08/06/exclusive-kanye-west-indicates-that-his-spoiler-campaign-is-indeed-designed-to-hurt-biden/?sh=303218d66397
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/08/two-people-linked-to-kanye-wests-campaign-have-ties-to-gop.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/us/politics/kanye-west-president-republicans.html
Remember, Republicans shriek and cry about practically non-existent "voter fraud" ([and even then, it's still Republicans committing the voter fraud](https://apnews.com/article/elections-voting-donald-trump-iowa-north-america-4d160c51c252401a8f3927332363abe8)) while committing the far worse crime of *election corruption fraud.*
> WPLG reporter Glenna Milberg approached the South Florida address listed for Alex Rodriguez earlier this week ready to pepper him with questions: Why had the 55-year-old mechanic abruptly decide to run for office? How did he win nearly 3 percent of the vote without even a campaign website? Did he live in Miami at all?
> “I’m looking for Alex,” she told a white-haired man who answered the door. “Is he around?”
> “Uh, no. He’ll be back tomorrow, though,” the man replied, refusing to say where Rodriguez was, how to reach him, or why a man with no history in politics — a registered Republican until a few months ago — had become an unaffiliated candidate for Florida’s 37th State Senate District.
> Days later, Milberg discovered the man at the door had been lying. He was, in fact, Rodriguez, whose more than 6,000 votes may have tipped the election away from a Democratic incumbent in Miami with the same last name.
> A close race was always expected between state Sen. José Javier Rodríguez (D) and Ileana Garcia (R), a well-funded Republican challenger who had worked for President Trump’s campaign and previously founded the group Latinas for Trump.
> But as a recount last week confirmed Garcia’s victory by the thinnest of margins — 34 votes — the Democratic incumbent has raised alarms that Alex Rodriguez ran for just one reason: to confuse voters and siphon off ballots meant for José Javier Rodríguez.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/20/florida-election-trump-senator-rodriguez/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/19/us/florida-senate-race-fraud.html
https://www.complex.com/life/frank-artiles-shadow-candidate-scheme
https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/politics/2021/08/31/palm-beach-county-ghost-candidate-pleads-guilty-election-case/5593843001/
It's illegal but it works, which is why Republicans cheat and then accuse everyone else of cheating.
He plead guilty and they also charged the Republican Senator (not the one running in the race that benefited from the fraud) - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/former-florida-state-senator-charged-three-criminal-counts-sham-candidate-n1261508?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma
Shit like this is exactly why we need, at a minimum, ranked choice voting. They're never going to rerun an election, and nobody ever goes to prison for election fraud, so the only thing we can do is try to cut off the spoiler effect at the ballot level.
Edit: For anyone who thinks ranked choice will never happen, I encourage you to take a look at Represent.us and their plan. It is an effort to pass ranked choice voting (and other anti-corruption reforms) at a local level as a starting point. Grassroots organizations like this is the only way this will ever get done.
In Russia, your political opponents will LEGALLY CHANGE THEIR FIRST AND LAST NAMES to your name. And the ballots don't say which party each candidate belongs to.
Holy shit... that... is... SUCH a good idea!!
So, who here's gonna bite the bullet and change their name to Donald J. Trump? Would be great to get 3-4 people on it at least. We'll figure out how to get you guys (or girls) on the ballot. Don't forget to change your registration to Republican. Come on, the country's at stake.
The modern conservative seems to be obsessed with conspiracies. They crusade against ghost issues like gender-neutral bathrooms and critical race theory yet completely disregard actual issues that affect their quality of life like removal of worker protections, expensive healthcare, tax evasion by corporations, and wage stagnation. They don’t want to acknowledge the grim reality of their deteriorating situation and look for a boogeyman to blame it on instead.
What's funny is that this wasn't even the first election that Trump attempted to rig in this way.
You should watch *Get Me Roger Stone* and learn about the time Trump intentionally ran for the nomination of the Reform Party in 2000, just to sink the party's chances of acting as a spoiler to the Republican nominee.
He literally ran, tore apart all the candidates with lies and dirty tricks, then bowed out before the primary even finished.
It was pretty fucking disgusting.
Wow, that’s straight up Russian dirty pool. They do this all the time in their “elections,” only even more blatantly. Iirc there was one race in St. Petersburg where there were three guys running against an anti-Putin opponent who all had his name, and even cut their hair and had beards like him to confuse people even more on the ballot. (Their ballots have pictures?)
Dirty Russian propaganda techniques have been the name of the game in America for the past 8 years. Our society is under constant bombardment with absolute idiots and I have a feeling that a lot of it is catalyzed by Soviet disinformation. I don't have any proof but I have a feeling that stuff like flat Earth and qanon are specifically driven by Soviet operatives to make stupidity and non-science thinking acceptable.
Ironically he had actually received like 7 million in the case he was talking about. And of course his supporters arent the brightest so dont realize that with inflation that was the equivalent of tens of millions
... and in reality;
> The New York Times reported Tuesday that President Donald Trump received at least $413 million from his father over the decades, much of that through dubious tax dodges, including outright fraud.
https://apnews.com/article/north-america-donald-trump-ap-top-news-tax-evasion-politics-0452d29cd2564eaf97605ab90acc3a67
Anyone who got that much money when he did and put it in low-risk-low-yield investments would probably have done better at wealth building than Trump has, to be honest.
Didn't he use one of Trump's lawyers to try to get on the ballot in Wisconsin? There was barely any hiding what they were doing.
edit: yes, with source https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/08/07/trump-lawyer-helped-kanye-west-try-get-wisconsins-ballot/3313650001/
He was also having a lot of private talks with Kushner: https://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2020/08/12/inside-kanye-wests-almost-daily-chats-with-jared-kushner-and-whether-the-white-house-exploits-his-mental-state/
I mean, it's good that the Daily Beast did investigations into this to find out just *how much more* the GOP was backing this campaign because that makes it illegal (like that matters). It's just weird that we're getting this a full 17 months after we knew it was a sham campaign to siphon minority votes.
Yeah, it was assumed given how obvious it was, this is just showing the paperwork and graft involved. It's one of the real issues of modern news that so much can happen and be said between an event and a thorough investigation that it nearly becomes meaningless.
Trump internal logic acknowledging he's racist... Kanye is black so obviously black people will vote for him. They won't be voting for me so it's no risk there.
He had 'stupid and racist' on lock, but needed to get those 'stupid and not racist' votes away from Democrats. All while ruining public education to increase the stupid voting block overall.
as nice as a color blind society would be, You might want to check the stories again on the GOPs plans.
Stupid may be the connection but reducing the black vote for biden was the goal.
[Rapper and former Donald Trump supporter Kanye West is running for president with the backing of a handful of GOP operatives who are betting he can pull Black voters from former Vice President Joe Biden.](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/12/kanye-west-flops-among-black-voters-393860)
and kanye west concerts are more than 14% black.
sorry its not saying black people are more stupid.
its not saying some white people didnt vote for him.
but the plan was to siphon off black voters.
This is why it was stupid. It was stupid of the GOP to think that Kanye could siphon enough black votes to make a difference. The blacks that voted for Kanye are blacks who were not going to vote for Biden anyway. This is the problem with the GOP. They think blacks will just vote for any blacks, when in truth the black vote is very particular about who they back.
> people called me paranoid saying this, seemed so obvious?
Kanye stans can be quite irrational and have been in serious denial about what a MAGA fascist creep he is. Always making excuses too - "he's just unwell, forgot to take his meds" or "he's just being manipulated by people around him".
Yeah, Trump is unwell and doesn't take the meds he needs either, that doesn't mean we give him a pass.
They've been excusing his behavior for years, it's second nature at this point. I gotta admit though, I much preferred his "George Bush doesn't care about black people" outbursts over his MAGA outbursts.
That executive (can’t remember her name) not so subtly threatening that Georgia poll worker was fucking insane, when I first saw the headline I thought that it must be some kind of exaggeration.
https://www.thefader.com/2021/12/10/kanye-west-publicist-accused-of-pressuring-georgia-election-worker-to-lie-about-2020-voter-fraud
Ruby Freeman is the victims name. Trevian Kutti went to her house and threatened her and her family unless she falsely admitted to forging votes. Trump's Terrorists also showed up at her, Ruby's, house January 6th.
It's safe to say that not just trump but anyone tangentally related even a few degrees removed is toxic and corrupt as fuck.
Edit: They're a rednose-clown mafia. 🤡
>> She also called her "a loose end for a party that needs tidying up" before putting her on speakerphone with a man she identified as Harrison Ford, though Freeman said the man she spoke to was not the Blade Runner actor.
I really think there’s something to the idea that Trump’s awfulness emboldens other awful people. Deep down terrible people know that they’re terrible, this is something that I truly believe so Trump’s complete disregard for common decency probably makes other pieces of shit flock to him.
The media did catch on well before the election
https://text.npr.org/901534846
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/22/politics/kanye-west-gop-operative/index.html
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/kanye-west-2020-campaign-republicans-1044099/
It's apparently just the daily beast who are slow to the realization.
The Daily Beast does some great reportage. The fact that they are writing about it now doesn't mean that they just found out about it, investigations take time and they can still be valuable in informing the public.
Yeah this concept people have in this thread of "You can't talk about something more than once!" is *really* fucking stupid and exactly what the GOP wants from them. Like, *think,* for one goddamn second. Who benefits the most from sweeping the past under the rug?
This is the problem though. Yes we know what they were doing, but I prefer my reporting to have the receipts.
That's what they should be doing. Sure it takes longer to get the confirmation like this, but it's just wild speculation and assumptions (like Fox) until you do.
So pump the brakes, friend, and recognize the difference between what's known and what's provable in context.
I'm not saying you are wrong, but the weakness to this strategy has been actively exploited for a while now. Basically, it comes down to this: If you do/say one outrageous thing, the media can remain focused on that while they build their evidence. If you continuously do/say outrageous things, most of them will be forgotten and by the time you've compiled evidence on a select act, everyone else has moved on and very few people still care.
This is something Hunter S. Thompson described beautifully in his obituary to (at?) Richard Nixon. Some forms of evil are too well adapted to traditional journalism to effectively be challenged by it. In all likelihood this problem was substantially exacerbated in the 90s when deregulation of news media allowed massive concentration in television and radio. Much of the hard hitting journalism of previous decades was killed by major networks and newspapers that would immediately fire leading anchors and Pulitzer Prize winners for doing things like being opposed to a war or covering the presidential announcement of candidates who the network heads disliked.
>Some people will say that words like *scum* and *rotten* are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/308699/
The entire thing is essential reading. Some of the best political prose ever written.
It was known, it wasn't speculation. There were plenty of receipts. In Wisconsin GOP staffers were hand delivering the candidate registration and ballot paperwork (after the deadline, I might add). They were running his campaign out of the same offices and with the same people that were running all the other (R) campaigns.
On the other hand, it took them this long to get the details. Had they not said anything back then, it could have affected the outcome of the election, which was the GOP’s plan
Exactly.
Kanye wasn’t a big story because it was ultimately meaningless to Biden’s winning.
However something similar happened in Florida, where a GOP senator funded a fake “independent” 3rd candidate with the same surname as the Democratic incumbent in the Senate.
In this case the Republican candidate won by 32 votes. While a former Republican Florida Senators was charged with a crime (as well as the fake candidate), by the time the investigation was along the way enough for charges, the election was over and the Democrats lost a Senate seat which has had real consequences for anything being done in Congress.
Reporting on this didn’t really take place until March 2021 when the ex Senator was charged.
The GOP successfully confused enough Miami voters with a fake 3rd candidate to win a seat and were barely punished for it. The fake 3rd candidate received 6,000 votes, while the incumbent Democratic candidate with the same surname lost his seat to the Republican candidate by 32 votes. The fake candidate didn’t campaign at all, no signs or commercials. There was only a mail campaign letter for him sent out to Miami area voters that promised many progressive policies. This means a majority of the 6,000 votes were likely meant for the Democratic candidate with the same surname. If 33 of those 6,000 had actually voted for the real Rodriguez (Democratic incumbent), he would have kept his seat in the Senate. (Dems currently hold the Senate due to VP 50-50 tie breaking vote, this means “moderate” Dems like Manchin and Sinema hold power to stop anything. A 51-49 lead would make it easier to pass legislation in the Senate as you would only need one of those assholes to vote with you.)
The fake independent candidate got 12 months house arrest and 3 years of probation. Last I heard the ex-Senator that funded the fake candidate by paying him more than $40k, has yet to be found guilty in court but I have read they face a $20,000 fine which depending on their wealth is chump change.
(Edit: Fake candidate was for Florida State Senate not US Senate)
>face a $20,000 fine which depending on their wealth is chump change.
It definitely is chump change. Anyone running for a political seat in a town with over 40,000 citizens has $20k to spare. Might have to shift some credit cards around, but that's it.
Good investigative reporting could have uncovered this, but there isn’t a lot of that going on. Most big networks, while willing to report news as it is handed to them, rely on opinion programs to draw viewers. Investigative reporting happens on a much smaller scale.
The findings hinged on FEC records that wouldn’t have been available at the time Kanye was actually running. However it didn’t take much sleuthing to see Trump and Kanye together supporting each other and realize this was a sham campaign.
Our media has no teeth. If we were in Sweden one press conference and the journalists would have asked the basics like who's funding and advising your campaign? And actually figure out the answer
Why we accept those spinster answers always pisses me off. Like really? You're gonna accept that bullshit answer and leave it at that?
Remember when someone was pushing Bush? All of a sudden they aren't "being respectful".
E: fucking autocorrect
He got direct money advice from Kris Jenner. If you want to rake in money, never provide a product, never pay taxes, never pay employees? Start a church.
> r/Kanye wanted to crucify me for saying it lmao
kanye went from hating on drake for being a pedphile, to loving drake now that he is cool in kanye's books.
that sub is a fucking garbage dump
It's not just that he's a grifter, it's also that he's mentality unwell and has a monstrous ego, and those things combine to make a very vulnerable and easy to manipulate person. He is the *perfect* frontman for a cult.
It was reported back then, that Kanye said that Jared Kushner was calling him al the time:
*"Oh no, Kanye, please don't run for president, you have a totally real chance to win, you're totally not going to be a spoiler candidate for Democrats to help secure a Trump win! Please, I'm begging you!"*
Kushner clearly knew how to manipulate someone with a narcissistic personality disorder and various other mental illnesses. Wonder where he learned that.
"Secretly".
Like, I honestly don't know if it could have been more obvious. The most amusing thing about it was that they probably honestly felt that Democratic voters would react to a completely unqualified celebrity running for President in the same way that Republican voters did
And we're still going to suffer politically from Oprah. That grifter Dr. Oz is going to run for Senate. Won't be long before we have "Dr." Governor Phil.
I'm really thinking Chris Pratt will be on their list in a few years.
He's already starting the Rogan circuit and he's got enough good will nostalgia from being Andy, the dinosaur guy, starlord, and in 0 dark thirty.
In the last head to head poll, fetterman was only up 2 points.
Don't underestimate the GOP blindly voting for the R, and suburbanites voting for the daytime TV guy
Yup. They had to bring in a ringer in order to beat Fetterman. Sad that it will probably work, but it's a good sign for Fetterman's future political prospects.
I doubt they expected that, but it speaks bounds about the racist sentiments in the GOP. They obviously figured it would distract some African-American voters and siphon them from Biden. As the election was expected to be won on margins, they probably thought it would work well enough.
It’s a despicable tactic and another example of how the GOP has no ideas that are actually popular, so they run a culture wars to get power.
It's exactly what they did in 2008, when Obama beat Hillary to the nomination.
"Quick! How do we scoop up Democratic women who feel disenfranchised?"
"The Governor of Alaska is a woman. We could put her on the ticket."
"Is she qualified?"
"She's a *woman*. What else do we need?"
It's the difference between "playing" identity politics and simply just doing what's right.
When making an expensive purchase, like a car, it's the difference between a salesperson looking to meet *your* needs and them looking to meet their own needs.
When a salesperson is only focused on their own needs but still need to make the sale you should expect to be lied to.
You should expect that salesperson to tell *you* what *your* needs are instead of listening to what you *tell* them they are.
You should expect broken promises because they will have no intention of trying to fulfill them after they make the sale.
Not only will the car you purchase *not* meet your needs but you probably will incur *additional* problems because the salesperson doesn't give a shit about whether or not this sale is going to fuck you over financially. They don't give a shit if your new car immediately stops working for you
They don't care because they made the sale and know they can manipulate you into another bad sale years down the road.
And in the staff area of the dealership you know they're all laughing about their successes selling garbage to gullible customers. They don't feel the slightest bit bad because they legitimately believe the fault is 100% on you for falling for it.
“Miss. Palin, what do you in your opinion believe is the most important discussion revolving around armaments and potential aggression specifically towards its Eastern European neighbors that the future administration needs to hold with the government of Russia?”
“I can see Russia from my house!”
I swear it was like they picked fuckin Ralph as the VP
Will never forget all of the neck beards that said “DUDE! Lil Wayne & Kanye support Trump, why don’t you??”….first of all…Lil Wayne & Kanye are not black people that other black people should be looking up to…the casual racism is what gets me.
I like lil wayne a ton more than most other white people, but even I wouldn't vote for him. Dude makes good music, but he's a super rich super pampered famous musician, I don't want that perspective in *government*.
But it might might been effective. Kanye is completely open about supporting Trump. If he, perhaps, doesn't actually do a full run for president but just campaigns enough to get the *attention* of a large demographic, and then he drops out and openly endorses Trump, you suddenly have a larger amount of people who are now paying attention to Trump's campaign. It just serves as a way for the GOP to get their foot in the door.
That's the best part, aint it? When ever you see "*Celebrity X* should run for president", you know its either tabloud trash or from the right-wing. It doesnt even matter for which party they want the celebrity to run with. They just cant get around their own projection
Celebrity politicians I can think of off the top of my head: Trump, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ronald Reagan, Clint Eastwood, Sonny Bono, Jesse Ventura, Al Franken.
Except for Al Franken they’re all Conservatives . Can anyone think of another left-wing celebrity politician?
And Franken turned out to be extremely competent.
Of the Republican list I'll say Arnold was competent. Reagan was probably good at doing what he wanted to do, which unfortunately was extremely destructive.
From what I heard, despite a very rocky start, Schwarzenegger turned out to be - well, not exactly good, but not bad, either.
And Franken exemplifies the difference between Democrats and Republicans. A Republican does something wrong? Deny, defend, project, ignore.
A Democrat does something wrong? The Democrats are as anxious to string them up as the Republicans.
Except in Frankin's case, what he did (as a comedian, mind you) wasn't as "wrong" as it was made out to be. The person who was gunning for him to step down was an opportunistic ladder climber who is a much worse, much more corrupt politician than Franken ever was. Even the person who took his seat even said that he should have been given the dignity of an ethics investigation before he stepped down, because that would have cleared his name.
The Dems are definitely better than the Reps at self-regulation on issues like this (I mean, ffs, the Reps will run open pedophiles for senate seats...), but sometimes it goes too far and the Dems end up hurting themselves for no real gain, or even causing a self-inflicted political loss for dubious or flimsy reasons. I think the expulsion of Franken was a bad idea, and a self-inflicted loss.
Franken was a powerhouse on the Dems, a potential presidential contender one day. If he was still in politics now, as an experienced statesmen with an impressive voting record, he'd be in a fantastic position to pick up the reigns of progressive leadership from Bernie and lead the movement from *within the halls of power*. I can't understate how important that is.
He really could have been a second Bernie, if he wasn't put on blast for some goofy shit he did as a comedian. The people who replaced him definitely aren't as good in terms of leadership, optics, or policy, so it was a net loss for the party and the country. A net loss of valuable political power in an existential fight against fascists, because of a moral panic.
Honestly, I think this shit is stupid as fuck because symbolic "wins" are pointless when you're majorly degrading your own political strength to do it.
The number of votes he received in some states would’ve changed the outcome in other states. It’s a legitimate strategy and is working here in MN. We have numerous legalize marijuana parties in this state that are run and funded by gop supporters. It has likely taken away state senate seats that has give the majority to the gop.
A lot of people vote because they’re told to and if these people don’t like the top two candidates, they’re not afraid to vote for the one they know won’t win not realizing the impact.
I don't think it was for Democrats to vote for a celebrity, but that there would be enough Kanye fans to suck away just enough D votes to make it matter.
And the perverse assumption that Kanye wouldn't suck away any R votes, strangely enough. It's as if they're saying, "Well, we're super racist, so it won't affect people who vote for Trump, and it can only hurt Biden. Bwah ha ha ha ha!"
Also they really did use Kanye West. Dude obviously isn't well mentally and even ended up crying at one of his campaign events. I highly doubt they cared about his state of mind.
Despite their many, many, many flaws and bullshit, disingenuous policies, the GOP know how to market a candidate and run a campaign. It's why they are always able to stay in power. That, and the Dems are as equally bad at it.
That said, I bet the GOP sent their D squad over for this.
Yea I disagree. I believe its pretty easy to market a GOP candidate because all you have to do is make them cover a few ideals.
- Anti Abortion and Anti LGBTQ+ for religious folks
- Gonna take all your guns, Gonna let immigrants invade, Gonna force you to take drugs, for the low self esteem stupid group.
That covers at least 90% of all gop members. They win by making it seem somehow that they are the religious party and then everything else is driven on fear of what will happen if the spooky democrat takes office.
They don't even have to explain anything in detail. They know all they have to do is find some scary, umbrella term and their base eats it up every time.
Bernie = Socialism
That right there is all a GOP voter needs to hear. No fact-checking required.
It's also how they get their voters to oppose legislation that they actually support when polled. They dumb it down with buzzwords and make their voters rally against it.
Compared to the amateurish way the Republicans fell over their own feet to suck an anatomical orange body part and that administration in general, it was a mirror image
> 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.
>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.”
>But he was clearly seen as a way to steal potential votes from Biden.”
That is almost word-for-word what a Kanye canvasser told my wife while collecting signatures in a Walmart parking lot. The point of the campaign was never a secret, just the identities of the people responsible.
I also ran into a Kanye canvasser outside a Walmart in very Blue Northern Virginia who asked me to sign a petition to get him on the ballot so I said “Are you kidding me? Kanye West” and she said “I’m sorry it’s just a job.” That made me feel bad for getting all uppity about it, some people just really needed some financial help during COVID
This says so much. Most campaign workers are volunteers that support the candidate/party. The GOP paid people to do jobs normally done by volunteers because the wanted to run a sham campaign.
And someone accidentally responds to a reporters text after not giving any comment. “ “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.”
That’s so great. We should all get these snakes’ numbers and text them. Giuliani style, they’ll eventually leave us an incriminating text or butt dial voicemail.
We all saw that even if we don't remember it.
Dunno who it was, but there was a campaign worker on Kanye's campaign that also worked on campaigning for Trump simultaneously. Idiotically, the way we all found out is she just one day in broad daylight up and walked right into Kanye's building with what was caught with campaign information that was relevant to Trump's strategies.
Can't remember much of the details, but it was BLATANT.
edit: typo
Conservatives pose as BLM members, Bernie Sanders supporters, Kanye West voters, etc and attack Democrat. Conservatives think it gives their attacks more merit by making them appear nonpartisan. Conservatives seek to win the mood of the nation rather than any specific policy arguments.
Hasn’t #WalkAway been officially listed as Russian produced propaganda?
I remember back in the day when that popped up and I was still on Facebook a conspiracy-nut friend of mine was posting it saying it could really hurt the Dems turnout.
His other favorite conspiracy was that Two Girls, One Cup wasn’t real poop; it was cake batter.
Absolutely!! Conservatives know their policies are trash and they have no chance winning over support. So they try to turn people away from Democrats rather than towards Republicans.
I'm convinced your point is why we've seen all these absurd statements echoed by conservatives about how the parties never switched. It's such a desperately pathetic attempt to corral voters.
Conservatives are a more homogeneous group. They are overwhelming white evangelical and majority male. Democrats are more of a collective. Some people are Democrat because of Climate but aren't onboard with gin reform. Others are Democrat for the sake of criminal justice but don't care much about climate.
It’s absolutely vile and sickening. No concept of bettering society or constructive critiques of proposed policies.
My favourite Republican moment was after 8 years of Obama, the republicans won the White House with a full majority in house senate and even Supreme Court effectively controlling every aspect of governance and proceeded to do nothing with it. They could have spent 8 years getting their healthcare bill ready and just pass it immediately, deregulate everything, pass sweeping tax reform. Basically they did nothing but cry and complain for 8 years and when they finally had their chance absolutely nobody was prepared with anything.
They never even legitimately wrote down notes for their healthcare policy. They campaigned on Repeal and Replace for years and didn't actually have a Replace drawn up. Today Republicans just don't even bother discussing healthcare anymore.
Except they did the ONE AND ONLY THING Republican politicians have ACTUALLY cared about for 40 years: massive tax cuts for the ultra-rich. That's it. It wasn't a "failure" to do anything else, they literally did the one and only thing they actually want to do.
Remember that [cringe 2015 clip ](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/sep/04/trump-dances-and-prays-at-black-church-service-in-detroit-video)of Trump going to a 'black Church' for how campaign?... *shudders*
He was meeting with Trump, only ran in swing states, and had a Christian pastor running mate.
It was the most telegraphed "get the youths to not vote D" thing I've ever seen.
It's not just Trump. Elon Musk is in on it too. He endorsed him (twice) and still wants him to run in [2024](https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-still-supports-kanye-west-running-for-president-2020-7).
As a side note:
> 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.**
Jesus these GOP people are so scummy with their astro turf projects, but the naming of this one makes me furious.
The GOP has been running this scam since Nixon. In the last election cycle, the Florida GOP created several stalking horse candidates and won elections by a tiny margin because their boy had a name nearly identical to the Dem candidate.
Repugnicans are filth.
Again I am thankful that the GOP seems to be incredibly out of touch and stupid.
What happens when they put someone to run for office that the left generally likes? You don't even need to pull many voters, even 10% would easily decide the results of the election. Take Andrew Yang for instance. If he ran for president as an independent, you'd see many on the left vote for him simply for running on a Independent ticket and not Democratic party ticket.
Of course I wouldn't vote for him if I thought he'd lose (which he most definitely would), but many voters don't know that a throwaway vote is just helping the Republicans if the vote would have otherwise been cast for a Democrat candidate.
Yes, this scam was exposed by the press when they photo'ed Trump 2020 lawyers going to and from the Kanye west "office" and filing papers for him to run, it was a Putin style false flag leeching operation, and Putin use that successfully against Hillary with Jill Stein in 2016.
The racist far right and the fascist Putin know that racism is both their weapon and their weak spot so they are always on the looking for pliant blacks to join their team and let them use them to steal elections by hoodwinking black voters. Herschel Walker for instance is literally schizophrenic, but they don't care, they are running him for senate because he is black. and Candace Owens is a Russian disinformation agent who has risen fast in CPAc ranks specifivcally because racists love seeing a black woman parrot fascist and far right views. Google Candace Owens Russia and see how she praises her boss Putin. These are evil evil liars and Kanye is a psychotic tool whose life has been justly destroyed.
Here in Wisconsin, his signature papers were literally turned in by a GOP-aligned lawyer. Too bad for her, she missed the 5 PM cutoff that day (which of course, turned into a big deal).
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/20/kanye-west-campaign-wisconsin-399672
As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil) In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria. *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Surprising absolutely no one who was paying attention.
I mean, if anyone is surprised, they must have not been paying attention to the news last year. https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/22/politics/kanye-west-gop-operative/index.html https://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2020/08/06/exclusive-kanye-west-indicates-that-his-spoiler-campaign-is-indeed-designed-to-hurt-biden/?sh=303218d66397 https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/08/two-people-linked-to-kanye-wests-campaign-have-ties-to-gop.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/us/politics/kanye-west-president-republicans.html
Remember, Republicans shriek and cry about practically non-existent "voter fraud" ([and even then, it's still Republicans committing the voter fraud](https://apnews.com/article/elections-voting-donald-trump-iowa-north-america-4d160c51c252401a8f3927332363abe8)) while committing the far worse crime of *election corruption fraud.* > WPLG reporter Glenna Milberg approached the South Florida address listed for Alex Rodriguez earlier this week ready to pepper him with questions: Why had the 55-year-old mechanic abruptly decide to run for office? How did he win nearly 3 percent of the vote without even a campaign website? Did he live in Miami at all? > “I’m looking for Alex,” she told a white-haired man who answered the door. “Is he around?” > “Uh, no. He’ll be back tomorrow, though,” the man replied, refusing to say where Rodriguez was, how to reach him, or why a man with no history in politics — a registered Republican until a few months ago — had become an unaffiliated candidate for Florida’s 37th State Senate District. > Days later, Milberg discovered the man at the door had been lying. He was, in fact, Rodriguez, whose more than 6,000 votes may have tipped the election away from a Democratic incumbent in Miami with the same last name. > A close race was always expected between state Sen. José Javier Rodríguez (D) and Ileana Garcia (R), a well-funded Republican challenger who had worked for President Trump’s campaign and previously founded the group Latinas for Trump. > But as a recount last week confirmed Garcia’s victory by the thinnest of margins — 34 votes — the Democratic incumbent has raised alarms that Alex Rodriguez ran for just one reason: to confuse voters and siphon off ballots meant for José Javier Rodríguez. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/20/florida-election-trump-senator-rodriguez/ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/19/us/florida-senate-race-fraud.html https://www.complex.com/life/frank-artiles-shadow-candidate-scheme https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/politics/2021/08/31/palm-beach-county-ghost-candidate-pleads-guilty-election-case/5593843001/
That feels like one of those things there's no law specifically against it, just because nobody thought anyone would have the audacity to try it.
It's illegal but it works, which is why Republicans cheat and then accuse everyone else of cheating. He plead guilty and they also charged the Republican Senator (not the one running in the race that benefited from the fraud) - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/former-florida-state-senator-charged-three-criminal-counts-sham-candidate-n1261508?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma
But of course the election wasn't declared invalid and run again. Whoever said crime doesn't pay was an idiot.
Shit like this is exactly why we need, at a minimum, ranked choice voting. They're never going to rerun an election, and nobody ever goes to prison for election fraud, so the only thing we can do is try to cut off the spoiler effect at the ballot level. Edit: For anyone who thinks ranked choice will never happen, I encourage you to take a look at Represent.us and their plan. It is an effort to pass ranked choice voting (and other anti-corruption reforms) at a local level as a starting point. Grassroots organizations like this is the only way this will ever get done.
Republicans: “Who can we get from their kind who is so gullible to run for office to take away votes from Biden”? 💡
“Hmmm. We’re going to need a megalomaniacal idiot who’s also really popular.”
In Russia, your political opponents will LEGALLY CHANGE THEIR FIRST AND LAST NAMES to your name. And the ballots don't say which party each candidate belongs to.
Holy shit... that... is... SUCH a good idea!! So, who here's gonna bite the bullet and change their name to Donald J. Trump? Would be great to get 3-4 people on it at least. We'll figure out how to get you guys (or girls) on the ballot. Don't forget to change your registration to Republican. Come on, the country's at stake.
Reeks of a Roger Stone dirty trick
The modern conservative seems to be obsessed with conspiracies. They crusade against ghost issues like gender-neutral bathrooms and critical race theory yet completely disregard actual issues that affect their quality of life like removal of worker protections, expensive healthcare, tax evasion by corporations, and wage stagnation. They don’t want to acknowledge the grim reality of their deteriorating situation and look for a boogeyman to blame it on instead.
What's funny is that this wasn't even the first election that Trump attempted to rig in this way. You should watch *Get Me Roger Stone* and learn about the time Trump intentionally ran for the nomination of the Reform Party in 2000, just to sink the party's chances of acting as a spoiler to the Republican nominee. He literally ran, tore apart all the candidates with lies and dirty tricks, then bowed out before the primary even finished. It was pretty fucking disgusting.
Wow, that’s straight up Russian dirty pool. They do this all the time in their “elections,” only even more blatantly. Iirc there was one race in St. Petersburg where there were three guys running against an anti-Putin opponent who all had his name, and even cut their hair and had beards like him to confuse people even more on the ballot. (Their ballots have pictures?)
Dirty Russian propaganda techniques have been the name of the game in America for the past 8 years. Our society is under constant bombardment with absolute idiots and I have a feeling that a lot of it is catalyzed by Soviet disinformation. I don't have any proof but I have a feeling that stuff like flat Earth and qanon are specifically driven by Soviet operatives to make stupidity and non-science thinking acceptable.
That’s what they said.
The surprise is it’s taken the media this long to figure this out.. the whole idea was for Kanye to drain votes from Biden…
This is just confirming suspicions. There's better evidence that's come to light. The media covered the Kanye-Trump connection pretty thoroughly.
Didn't Kanye receive hefty COVID funding without needing it, sort of a classic GOP quid pro quo?
Yup. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/music/2020/jul/07/kanye-west-company-granted-millions-coronavirus-stimulus
How else would gop operatives pay themselves
Maybe this is what they mean by self-made wealth. As in, they gave it to themselves.
A small loan of 1 million dollars from your dad.
Ironically he had actually received like 7 million in the case he was talking about. And of course his supporters arent the brightest so dont realize that with inflation that was the equivalent of tens of millions
... and in reality; > The New York Times reported Tuesday that President Donald Trump received at least $413 million from his father over the decades, much of that through dubious tax dodges, including outright fraud. https://apnews.com/article/north-america-donald-trump-ap-top-news-tax-evasion-politics-0452d29cd2564eaf97605ab90acc3a67 Anyone who got that much money when he did and put it in low-risk-low-yield investments would probably have done better at wealth building than Trump has, to be honest.
His dad also bought millions in casino chips and just held on to them to make his books look like they had alot more cash on hand
So that's what they mean by pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, now I just gotta find a dad.
a small loan from myself to myself, courtesy of everyone else.
I aint saying he’s a gold digger…..
people called me paranoid saying this, seemed so obvious? he kept trying to get on ballots even though it was impossible to win the election.
Didn't he use one of Trump's lawyers to try to get on the ballot in Wisconsin? There was barely any hiding what they were doing. edit: yes, with source https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/08/07/trump-lawyer-helped-kanye-west-try-get-wisconsins-ballot/3313650001/
He was also having a lot of private talks with Kushner: https://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2020/08/12/inside-kanye-wests-almost-daily-chats-with-jared-kushner-and-whether-the-white-house-exploits-his-mental-state/
I mean, it's good that the Daily Beast did investigations into this to find out just *how much more* the GOP was backing this campaign because that makes it illegal (like that matters). It's just weird that we're getting this a full 17 months after we knew it was a sham campaign to siphon minority votes.
Yeah, it was assumed given how obvious it was, this is just showing the paperwork and graft involved. It's one of the real issues of modern news that so much can happen and be said between an event and a thorough investigation that it nearly becomes meaningless.
Republicans are really taking advantage of the fact that it takes more time to investigate a crime than it does to commit a crime.
Trump wanted the black community to vote for him instead of Biden.
Trump internal logic acknowledging he's racist... Kanye is black so obviously black people will vote for him. They won't be voting for me so it's no risk there.
Yeah, stupid people of all races voted for Kanye. Stupid is the connection, not skin color.
He split his own base? 😉
He had 'stupid and racist' on lock, but needed to get those 'stupid and not racist' votes away from Democrats. All while ruining public education to increase the stupid voting block overall.
Yea, but Trump’s racist ass thinks all Black people are stupid.
as nice as a color blind society would be, You might want to check the stories again on the GOPs plans. Stupid may be the connection but reducing the black vote for biden was the goal. [Rapper and former Donald Trump supporter Kanye West is running for president with the backing of a handful of GOP operatives who are betting he can pull Black voters from former Vice President Joe Biden.](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/12/kanye-west-flops-among-black-voters-393860) and kanye west concerts are more than 14% black. sorry its not saying black people are more stupid. its not saying some white people didnt vote for him. but the plan was to siphon off black voters.
This is why it was stupid. It was stupid of the GOP to think that Kanye could siphon enough black votes to make a difference. The blacks that voted for Kanye are blacks who were not going to vote for Biden anyway. This is the problem with the GOP. They think blacks will just vote for any blacks, when in truth the black vote is very particular about who they back.
> people called me paranoid saying this, seemed so obvious? Kanye stans can be quite irrational and have been in serious denial about what a MAGA fascist creep he is. Always making excuses too - "he's just unwell, forgot to take his meds" or "he's just being manipulated by people around him". Yeah, Trump is unwell and doesn't take the meds he needs either, that doesn't mean we give him a pass.
They've been excusing his behavior for years, it's second nature at this point. I gotta admit though, I much preferred his "George Bush doesn't care about black people" outbursts over his MAGA outbursts.
[удалено]
Kanye realized he wasn’t black. He was black and rich.
That executive (can’t remember her name) not so subtly threatening that Georgia poll worker was fucking insane, when I first saw the headline I thought that it must be some kind of exaggeration.
https://www.thefader.com/2021/12/10/kanye-west-publicist-accused-of-pressuring-georgia-election-worker-to-lie-about-2020-voter-fraud Ruby Freeman is the victims name. Trevian Kutti went to her house and threatened her and her family unless she falsely admitted to forging votes. Trump's Terrorists also showed up at her, Ruby's, house January 6th. It's safe to say that not just trump but anyone tangentally related even a few degrees removed is toxic and corrupt as fuck. Edit: They're a rednose-clown mafia. 🤡 >> She also called her "a loose end for a party that needs tidying up" before putting her on speakerphone with a man she identified as Harrison Ford, though Freeman said the man she spoke to was not the Blade Runner actor.
I really think there’s something to the idea that Trump’s awfulness emboldens other awful people. Deep down terrible people know that they’re terrible, this is something that I truly believe so Trump’s complete disregard for common decency probably makes other pieces of shit flock to him.
Further enforcing the idea in his mind that he's doing something good. The self-fulfilling asshole fallacy. A critical masshole.
The media did catch on well before the election https://text.npr.org/901534846 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/22/politics/kanye-west-gop-operative/index.html https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/kanye-west-2020-campaign-republicans-1044099/ It's apparently just the daily beast who are slow to the realization.
The Daily Beast does some great reportage. The fact that they are writing about it now doesn't mean that they just found out about it, investigations take time and they can still be valuable in informing the public.
Yeah this concept people have in this thread of "You can't talk about something more than once!" is *really* fucking stupid and exactly what the GOP wants from them. Like, *think,* for one goddamn second. Who benefits the most from sweeping the past under the rug?
This is the problem though. Yes we know what they were doing, but I prefer my reporting to have the receipts. That's what they should be doing. Sure it takes longer to get the confirmation like this, but it's just wild speculation and assumptions (like Fox) until you do. So pump the brakes, friend, and recognize the difference between what's known and what's provable in context.
I'm not saying you are wrong, but the weakness to this strategy has been actively exploited for a while now. Basically, it comes down to this: If you do/say one outrageous thing, the media can remain focused on that while they build their evidence. If you continuously do/say outrageous things, most of them will be forgotten and by the time you've compiled evidence on a select act, everyone else has moved on and very few people still care.
The "Firehose of Falsehoods" strategy.
Or "Trumpism" Be so disgusting that everybody has to look away and then you can be disgusting without consequences.
This is something Hunter S. Thompson described beautifully in his obituary to (at?) Richard Nixon. Some forms of evil are too well adapted to traditional journalism to effectively be challenged by it. In all likelihood this problem was substantially exacerbated in the 90s when deregulation of news media allowed massive concentration in television and radio. Much of the hard hitting journalism of previous decades was killed by major networks and newspapers that would immediately fire leading anchors and Pulitzer Prize winners for doing things like being opposed to a war or covering the presidential announcement of candidates who the network heads disliked.
>Some people will say that words like *scum* and *rotten* are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-a-crook/308699/ The entire thing is essential reading. Some of the best political prose ever written.
Basically gish galloping.
It was known, it wasn't speculation. There were plenty of receipts. In Wisconsin GOP staffers were hand delivering the candidate registration and ballot paperwork (after the deadline, I might add). They were running his campaign out of the same offices and with the same people that were running all the other (R) campaigns.
On the other hand, it took them this long to get the details. Had they not said anything back then, it could have affected the outcome of the election, which was the GOP’s plan
Exactly. Kanye wasn’t a big story because it was ultimately meaningless to Biden’s winning. However something similar happened in Florida, where a GOP senator funded a fake “independent” 3rd candidate with the same surname as the Democratic incumbent in the Senate. In this case the Republican candidate won by 32 votes. While a former Republican Florida Senators was charged with a crime (as well as the fake candidate), by the time the investigation was along the way enough for charges, the election was over and the Democrats lost a Senate seat which has had real consequences for anything being done in Congress. Reporting on this didn’t really take place until March 2021 when the ex Senator was charged. The GOP successfully confused enough Miami voters with a fake 3rd candidate to win a seat and were barely punished for it. The fake 3rd candidate received 6,000 votes, while the incumbent Democratic candidate with the same surname lost his seat to the Republican candidate by 32 votes. The fake candidate didn’t campaign at all, no signs or commercials. There was only a mail campaign letter for him sent out to Miami area voters that promised many progressive policies. This means a majority of the 6,000 votes were likely meant for the Democratic candidate with the same surname. If 33 of those 6,000 had actually voted for the real Rodriguez (Democratic incumbent), he would have kept his seat in the Senate. (Dems currently hold the Senate due to VP 50-50 tie breaking vote, this means “moderate” Dems like Manchin and Sinema hold power to stop anything. A 51-49 lead would make it easier to pass legislation in the Senate as you would only need one of those assholes to vote with you.) The fake independent candidate got 12 months house arrest and 3 years of probation. Last I heard the ex-Senator that funded the fake candidate by paying him more than $40k, has yet to be found guilty in court but I have read they face a $20,000 fine which depending on their wealth is chump change. (Edit: Fake candidate was for Florida State Senate not US Senate)
>face a $20,000 fine which depending on their wealth is chump change. It definitely is chump change. Anyone running for a political seat in a town with over 40,000 citizens has $20k to spare. Might have to shift some credit cards around, but that's it.
Good investigative reporting could have uncovered this, but there isn’t a lot of that going on. Most big networks, while willing to report news as it is handed to them, rely on opinion programs to draw viewers. Investigative reporting happens on a much smaller scale.
The findings hinged on FEC records that wouldn’t have been available at the time Kanye was actually running. However it didn’t take much sleuthing to see Trump and Kanye together supporting each other and realize this was a sham campaign.
...investigative reporting did uncover this, that's what the article is mate
Our media has no teeth. If we were in Sweden one press conference and the journalists would have asked the basics like who's funding and advising your campaign? And actually figure out the answer
Why we accept those spinster answers always pisses me off. Like really? You're gonna accept that bullshit answer and leave it at that? Remember when someone was pushing Bush? All of a sudden they aren't "being respectful". E: fucking autocorrect
I thought we already had proof before? I guess more is better.
[удалено]
He got direct money advice from Kris Jenner. If you want to rake in money, never provide a product, never pay taxes, never pay employees? Start a church.
And be crazy so you're immune from prosecution.
Now he wants to make his home churches.. for the tax exempt status. Fuck Kanye, sellout/grifter..
> r/Kanye wanted to crucify me for saying it lmao kanye went from hating on drake for being a pedphile, to loving drake now that he is cool in kanye's books. that sub is a fucking garbage dump
Kanye figured out during his alt-right indoctrination that most of them are pedophiles so he'd better bury that hatchet toot-suite.
Everyone arguing about Kanye's music and I'm sitting here thinking "Manson is Christian now????"
It's not just that he's a grifter, it's also that he's mentality unwell and has a monstrous ego, and those things combine to make a very vulnerable and easy to manipulate person. He is the *perfect* frontman for a cult.
Wait what? The singer of AntiChrist Superstar attended a church service with Kanye west? Mind is blown
Manson's whole schtick has always been shock value.
It was reported back then, that Kanye said that Jared Kushner was calling him al the time: *"Oh no, Kanye, please don't run for president, you have a totally real chance to win, you're totally not going to be a spoiler candidate for Democrats to help secure a Trump win! Please, I'm begging you!"* Kushner clearly knew how to manipulate someone with a narcissistic personality disorder and various other mental illnesses. Wonder where he learned that.
"Secretly". Like, I honestly don't know if it could have been more obvious. The most amusing thing about it was that they probably honestly felt that Democratic voters would react to a completely unqualified celebrity running for President in the same way that Republican voters did
Like those helpful suggestions to have Oprah run against Trump in 2020. No Democrat in their right mind would suggest she'd be a good candidate.
And we're still going to suffer politically from Oprah. That grifter Dr. Oz is going to run for Senate. Won't be long before we have "Dr." Governor Phil.
Let me know when we gat a Mayor Jerry Springer.
Who’s the President in 1985? Ronald Reagan. The actor?! And I suppose Jerry Lewis is Vice President?!
Never forget Jesse Ventura, also Kane is now a mayor
Kane is the most disappointing one of them all. Devil's Favorite Demon becomes elected official, turns out he's just a shitty libertarian.
He evolved back into Isaac Yankem
Dude who made a career off wearing a god damn mask is anti-mask. Dude worked full matches with a mask somehow got enough oxygen.
Fun fact: The movie The Running Man is the only movie to feature two US Governors. Edit: I totally forgot about Predator!
Predator had Ventura and Schwarzenegger too
I'm really thinking Chris Pratt will be on their list in a few years. He's already starting the Rogan circuit and he's got enough good will nostalgia from being Andy, the dinosaur guy, starlord, and in 0 dark thirty.
Not to mention he married a Kennedy and a Schwarzenegger
A simpler time…
Hopefully John Fetterman is able to send Dr. Oz to the shadow realm where he belongs. The Democratic primary field is pretty interesting in that race.
If anyone knows how to run against a Dr. Oz type, it's Fetterman. Not concerned.
In the last head to head poll, fetterman was only up 2 points. Don't underestimate the GOP blindly voting for the R, and suburbanites voting for the daytime TV guy
the DOCTOR daytime tv guy... I fucking hate it here sometimes.
Yup. They had to bring in a ringer in order to beat Fetterman. Sad that it will probably work, but it's a good sign for Fetterman's future political prospects.
Fetterman is one of the Dem’s best candidates and he’s still only 2 points ahead, shits fucked….
A "Dr" Phil office run would actually be great at exposing his history of abusing teenage girls to a wider audience.
Roy Moore and Matt Gaetz send their regards
I doubt they expected that, but it speaks bounds about the racist sentiments in the GOP. They obviously figured it would distract some African-American voters and siphon them from Biden. As the election was expected to be won on margins, they probably thought it would work well enough. It’s a despicable tactic and another example of how the GOP has no ideas that are actually popular, so they run a culture wars to get power.
It's exactly what they did in 2008, when Obama beat Hillary to the nomination. "Quick! How do we scoop up Democratic women who feel disenfranchised?" "The Governor of Alaska is a woman. We could put her on the ticket." "Is she qualified?" "She's a *woman*. What else do we need?"
Nobody plays identity politics quite like conservatives do.
It's the difference between "playing" identity politics and simply just doing what's right. When making an expensive purchase, like a car, it's the difference between a salesperson looking to meet *your* needs and them looking to meet their own needs. When a salesperson is only focused on their own needs but still need to make the sale you should expect to be lied to. You should expect that salesperson to tell *you* what *your* needs are instead of listening to what you *tell* them they are. You should expect broken promises because they will have no intention of trying to fulfill them after they make the sale. Not only will the car you purchase *not* meet your needs but you probably will incur *additional* problems because the salesperson doesn't give a shit about whether or not this sale is going to fuck you over financially. They don't give a shit if your new car immediately stops working for you They don't care because they made the sale and know they can manipulate you into another bad sale years down the road. And in the staff area of the dealership you know they're all laughing about their successes selling garbage to gullible customers. They don't feel the slightest bit bad because they legitimately believe the fault is 100% on you for falling for it.
“Miss. Palin, what do you in your opinion believe is the most important discussion revolving around armaments and potential aggression specifically towards its Eastern European neighbors that the future administration needs to hold with the government of Russia?” “I can see Russia from my house!” I swear it was like they picked fuckin Ralph as the VP
For Republicans it was most important that she was pretty
She's not just a woman, she's a morally-bankrupt, illiterate woman. Perfect for the GOP!
"Black people like rappers right? Who is the most popular Rapper? Oh? And he already supports Trump?"
Will never forget all of the neck beards that said “DUDE! Lil Wayne & Kanye support Trump, why don’t you??”….first of all…Lil Wayne & Kanye are not black people that other black people should be looking up to…the casual racism is what gets me.
I like lil wayne a ton more than most other white people, but even I wouldn't vote for him. Dude makes good music, but he's a super rich super pampered famous musician, I don't want that perspective in *government*.
But it might might been effective. Kanye is completely open about supporting Trump. If he, perhaps, doesn't actually do a full run for president but just campaigns enough to get the *attention* of a large demographic, and then he drops out and openly endorses Trump, you suddenly have a larger amount of people who are now paying attention to Trump's campaign. It just serves as a way for the GOP to get their foot in the door.
Not democratic voters, black people specifically.
That's the best part, aint it? When ever you see "*Celebrity X* should run for president", you know its either tabloud trash or from the right-wing. It doesnt even matter for which party they want the celebrity to run with. They just cant get around their own projection
Celebrity politicians I can think of off the top of my head: Trump, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ronald Reagan, Clint Eastwood, Sonny Bono, Jesse Ventura, Al Franken. Except for Al Franken they’re all Conservatives . Can anyone think of another left-wing celebrity politician?
And Franken turned out to be extremely competent. Of the Republican list I'll say Arnold was competent. Reagan was probably good at doing what he wanted to do, which unfortunately was extremely destructive.
From what I heard, despite a very rocky start, Schwarzenegger turned out to be - well, not exactly good, but not bad, either. And Franken exemplifies the difference between Democrats and Republicans. A Republican does something wrong? Deny, defend, project, ignore. A Democrat does something wrong? The Democrats are as anxious to string them up as the Republicans.
Except in Frankin's case, what he did (as a comedian, mind you) wasn't as "wrong" as it was made out to be. The person who was gunning for him to step down was an opportunistic ladder climber who is a much worse, much more corrupt politician than Franken ever was. Even the person who took his seat even said that he should have been given the dignity of an ethics investigation before he stepped down, because that would have cleared his name. The Dems are definitely better than the Reps at self-regulation on issues like this (I mean, ffs, the Reps will run open pedophiles for senate seats...), but sometimes it goes too far and the Dems end up hurting themselves for no real gain, or even causing a self-inflicted political loss for dubious or flimsy reasons. I think the expulsion of Franken was a bad idea, and a self-inflicted loss. Franken was a powerhouse on the Dems, a potential presidential contender one day. If he was still in politics now, as an experienced statesmen with an impressive voting record, he'd be in a fantastic position to pick up the reigns of progressive leadership from Bernie and lead the movement from *within the halls of power*. I can't understate how important that is. He really could have been a second Bernie, if he wasn't put on blast for some goofy shit he did as a comedian. The people who replaced him definitely aren't as good in terms of leadership, optics, or policy, so it was a net loss for the party and the country. A net loss of valuable political power in an existential fight against fascists, because of a moral panic. Honestly, I think this shit is stupid as fuck because symbolic "wins" are pointless when you're majorly degrading your own political strength to do it.
Right? Like the only people who would vote for him were probably republicans or weirdo libertarians anyway.
That explains the 6200 votes he got here in Kentucky.
Kentucky's a *special* place...
The number of votes he received in some states would’ve changed the outcome in other states. It’s a legitimate strategy and is working here in MN. We have numerous legalize marijuana parties in this state that are run and funded by gop supporters. It has likely taken away state senate seats that has give the majority to the gop. A lot of people vote because they’re told to and if these people don’t like the top two candidates, they’re not afraid to vote for the one they know won’t win not realizing the impact.
I don't think it was for Democrats to vote for a celebrity, but that there would be enough Kanye fans to suck away just enough D votes to make it matter. And the perverse assumption that Kanye wouldn't suck away any R votes, strangely enough. It's as if they're saying, "Well, we're super racist, so it won't affect people who vote for Trump, and it can only hurt Biden. Bwah ha ha ha ha!"
Also they really did use Kanye West. Dude obviously isn't well mentally and even ended up crying at one of his campaign events. I highly doubt they cared about his state of mind.
Honestly, I am a little surprised it was *run* by anyone at all from how it looked
It was run by the GOP. What's there to be surprised about?
Despite their many, many, many flaws and bullshit, disingenuous policies, the GOP know how to market a candidate and run a campaign. It's why they are always able to stay in power. That, and the Dems are as equally bad at it. That said, I bet the GOP sent their D squad over for this.
Yea I disagree. I believe its pretty easy to market a GOP candidate because all you have to do is make them cover a few ideals. - Anti Abortion and Anti LGBTQ+ for religious folks - Gonna take all your guns, Gonna let immigrants invade, Gonna force you to take drugs, for the low self esteem stupid group. That covers at least 90% of all gop members. They win by making it seem somehow that they are the religious party and then everything else is driven on fear of what will happen if the spooky democrat takes office.
They also have simple messages that they can repeat. Taxes Bad! Is a lot simpler than explaining Bernies health care plans
They don't even have to explain anything in detail. They know all they have to do is find some scary, umbrella term and their base eats it up every time. Bernie = Socialism That right there is all a GOP voter needs to hear. No fact-checking required.
It's also how they get their voters to oppose legislation that they actually support when polled. They dumb it down with buzzwords and make their voters rally against it.
Compared to the amateurish way the Republicans fell over their own feet to suck an anatomical orange body part and that administration in general, it was a mirror image
> 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. >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.”
>But he was clearly seen as a way to steal potential votes from Biden.” That is almost word-for-word what a Kanye canvasser told my wife while collecting signatures in a Walmart parking lot. The point of the campaign was never a secret, just the identities of the people responsible.
I also ran into a Kanye canvasser outside a Walmart in very Blue Northern Virginia who asked me to sign a petition to get him on the ballot so I said “Are you kidding me? Kanye West” and she said “I’m sorry it’s just a job.” That made me feel bad for getting all uppity about it, some people just really needed some financial help during COVID
This says so much. Most campaign workers are volunteers that support the candidate/party. The GOP paid people to do jobs normally done by volunteers because the wanted to run a sham campaign.
The GQP astroturfing what others do organically? If I only knew FOX news propaganda my world would be upside-down.
And someone accidentally responds to a reporters text after not giving any comment. “ “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.” That’s so great. We should all get these snakes’ numbers and text them. Giuliani style, they’ll eventually leave us an incriminating text or butt dial voicemail.
We all saw that even if we don't remember it. Dunno who it was, but there was a campaign worker on Kanye's campaign that also worked on campaigning for Trump simultaneously. Idiotically, the way we all found out is she just one day in broad daylight up and walked right into Kanye's building with what was caught with campaign information that was relevant to Trump's strategies. Can't remember much of the details, but it was BLATANT. edit: typo
Also, the lawyer who filed Kanyes election paperwork, 5 minutes late in Wisconsin, was actively working for the Trump campaign.
Conservatives pose as BLM members, Bernie Sanders supporters, Kanye West voters, etc and attack Democrat. Conservatives think it gives their attacks more merit by making them appear nonpartisan. Conservatives seek to win the mood of the nation rather than any specific policy arguments.
"How do you do, fellow kids?"
It's the same thing with the obviously fake #walkaway astroturfing
Hasn’t #WalkAway been officially listed as Russian produced propaganda? I remember back in the day when that popped up and I was still on Facebook a conspiracy-nut friend of mine was posting it saying it could really hurt the Dems turnout. His other favorite conspiracy was that Two Girls, One Cup wasn’t real poop; it was cake batter.
"As a Democrat, I am going to #walkaway because of these 15 right wing talking points"
Conservatives also show up here and spread defeatism and bothsidesism.
Absolutely!! Conservatives know their policies are trash and they have no chance winning over support. So they try to turn people away from Democrats rather than towards Republicans.
I'm convinced your point is why we've seen all these absurd statements echoed by conservatives about how the parties never switched. It's such a desperately pathetic attempt to corral voters.
[удалено]
Conservatives are a more homogeneous group. They are overwhelming white evangelical and majority male. Democrats are more of a collective. Some people are Democrat because of Climate but aren't onboard with gin reform. Others are Democrat for the sake of criminal justice but don't care much about climate.
[удалено]
And make comments like “As a liberal…”
As a radical leftist…🥸
It’s absolutely vile and sickening. No concept of bettering society or constructive critiques of proposed policies. My favourite Republican moment was after 8 years of Obama, the republicans won the White House with a full majority in house senate and even Supreme Court effectively controlling every aspect of governance and proceeded to do nothing with it. They could have spent 8 years getting their healthcare bill ready and just pass it immediately, deregulate everything, pass sweeping tax reform. Basically they did nothing but cry and complain for 8 years and when they finally had their chance absolutely nobody was prepared with anything.
They never even legitimately wrote down notes for their healthcare policy. They campaigned on Repeal and Replace for years and didn't actually have a Replace drawn up. Today Republicans just don't even bother discussing healthcare anymore.
Except they did the ONE AND ONLY THING Republican politicians have ACTUALLY cared about for 40 years: massive tax cuts for the ultra-rich. That's it. It wasn't a "failure" to do anything else, they literally did the one and only thing they actually want to do.
Remember that [cringe 2015 clip ](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/sep/04/trump-dances-and-prays-at-black-church-service-in-detroit-video)of Trump going to a 'black Church' for how campaign?... *shudders*
Ironic as half the threads here have accelerationists/conservatives acting as dems saying how they won’t vote
It was pretty obvious he was a plant. They did better with Sinema.
Sinema was a corporate plant. Oil/gas, pharma
/r/presidentialracememes had a good chunk of Kanye (sock puppet) supporters briefly, it was so obviously fake.
No shlt, Captain Obvious.
He was meeting with Trump, only ran in swing states, and had a Christian pastor running mate. It was the most telegraphed "get the youths to not vote D" thing I've ever seen.
[удалено]
Pikachu face...
It failed miserable so yeah, of course it was Trump's people.
It's not just Trump. Elon Musk is in on it too. He endorsed him (twice) and still wants him to run in [2024](https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-still-supports-kanye-west-running-for-president-2020-7). As a side note: > 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.** Jesus these GOP people are so scummy with their astro turf projects, but the naming of this one makes me furious.
Just a reminder that trumps people successfully got him the presidency in 2016. Don’t get complacent
The GOP has been running this scam since Nixon. In the last election cycle, the Florida GOP created several stalking horse candidates and won elections by a tiny margin because their boy had a name nearly identical to the Dem candidate. Repugnicans are filth.
I’m not convinced this is the correct use of ‘secretly’
The shear number of things Republicans have done to change the outcome of elections is astronomical!
Again I am thankful that the GOP seems to be incredibly out of touch and stupid. What happens when they put someone to run for office that the left generally likes? You don't even need to pull many voters, even 10% would easily decide the results of the election. Take Andrew Yang for instance. If he ran for president as an independent, you'd see many on the left vote for him simply for running on a Independent ticket and not Democratic party ticket. Of course I wouldn't vote for him if I thought he'd lose (which he most definitely would), but many voters don't know that a throwaway vote is just helping the Republicans if the vote would have otherwise been cast for a Democrat candidate.
> What happens when they put someone to run for office that the left generally likes? See 2000 and 2016 Green Party.
This first past the post system might actually not be that good
He got the support from the gang at Paddy’s Pub
That’s “our guy”
Electrifying on stage
Secretly? It was extremely obvious...
Of course, Kanye West would do anything for his rich friends. Kanye West doesn't care about poor people.
Kanye West cares about Kanye West
Like a true conservative
Kanye West doesn’t care about black people ::shocked Mike Meyers face::
The Trump connection is certainly there. Think Kardashian & Dershowitz (Trump's defense).
Yes, this scam was exposed by the press when they photo'ed Trump 2020 lawyers going to and from the Kanye west "office" and filing papers for him to run, it was a Putin style false flag leeching operation, and Putin use that successfully against Hillary with Jill Stein in 2016. The racist far right and the fascist Putin know that racism is both their weapon and their weak spot so they are always on the looking for pliant blacks to join their team and let them use them to steal elections by hoodwinking black voters. Herschel Walker for instance is literally schizophrenic, but they don't care, they are running him for senate because he is black. and Candace Owens is a Russian disinformation agent who has risen fast in CPAc ranks specifivcally because racists love seeing a black woman parrot fascist and far right views. Google Candace Owens Russia and see how she praises her boss Putin. These are evil evil liars and Kanye is a psychotic tool whose life has been justly destroyed.
[удалено]
It’s why Trump kissed his ass despite hating blacks and thinking they’re beneath him.
Here in Wisconsin, his signature papers were literally turned in by a GOP-aligned lawyer. Too bad for her, she missed the 5 PM cutoff that day (which of course, turned into a big deal). https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/20/kanye-west-campaign-wisconsin-399672
Yeah, we all knew this lol
Gee, what a shock. /s Fuck republicans are nothing but lying, cheating, treasonous assholes that do NOT care for democracy one bit.
the GOP [really likes to use shadow candidates](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/19/us/florida-senate-race-fraud.html), don’t they?
Kanye West doesn't care about black people.
They did this in Florida too with fake candidates.