
Kanye West’s announcement of the launch of his 2024 presidential election campaign on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast recently was met with widespread derision. His 2020 campaign was drawing to a close and he had managed to garner only a farcical 60,000 votes in an electorate of 150 million. He had no track record in representative politics. He had been involved in endless scandals and controversies about his extremist utterances and about his marriage to reality TV megastar Kim Kardashian. His pronouncements on public affairs were generally incoherent and his manifesto had consisted of 10 verses from the Bible, chosen apparently at random and spelled out in bold block caps.
It seemed fairly obvious that he was not serious about running the country and that the “campaign” was a fairly transparent publicity stunt.
But wait a minute…