Kanye West will not run for president in 2024, lawyer says
The decision comes after a summer in which West has largely kept his name out of the news.
Kanye West has dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, his attorney Bruce Marks told Rolling Stone. “He’s not a candidate for office in 2024,” Marks said in his statement to the magazine.
Back in April, Kanye West reportedly told Adam Camacho, a film maker he’d hired to document his life in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, that he was no longer focusing on the campaign. “Right now, I am living my life — like I’m concentrating on the school, The Donda Academy, and my new wife, and my kids, and that’s it,” West was quoted by Camacho as saying. “I just want to be left alone.” (A week earlier, two former Donda Academy teachers sued West for racial discrimination and wrongful termination.)
An anonymous employee of West backed up Camacho’s account. “His interests are focused on his children, family, and creative endeavors,” the source told the Daily Beast. Anyone that is representing Ye in any political capacity is a charlatan. There is no political shop.” Less than a month later, though, another Daily Beast report found that Milo Yiannopoulos — an far-right troll whose popularity peaked in the pre-Trump era — was revamping West’s campaign, and allegedly committing campaign finance fraud.
In the time since, West has largely avoided bad press after months of erratic behavior and anti-semitic statements lost him his long-running Def Jam deal, untold millions in brand partnerships, and more.
In late July, he returned to Elon Musk’s social media website after being suspended in December 2022 for tweeting an image of a swastika (back when the site was still called Twitter). A week later, Travis Scott surprised the audience at Rome’s Circus Maximus by bringing him out to perform. In a recent interview, Adidas CEO Bjørn Gulden said he didn’t think West had meant his hateful statements about Jews and others.
Forbes reported in September that Kanye was working on a new album that could drop soon, “potentially without warning.” And last week, Billboard confirmed that West and Ty Dolla $ign were shopping a collaborative record to distributors. On Friday, October 13th, Billboard Italia wrote that Ty and West were planning a concert together at an undisclosed location in Italy. Tickets to the October 27 show were scheduled to go on sale on Sunday the 15th, according to the report, but the date went by with no official confirmation of the concert, and such an announcement has still not been made.
The FADER has reached out to Bruce Marks for further comment on his statement to Rolling Stone about the dissolution of Kanye West’s 2024 presidential campaign.