Kanye “Ye” West has apparently made good on his promise to run for president in 2024 and launched his first campaign ad late Thursday.
Posted to his Twitter account, which Elon Musk just reinstated last week, the Thanksgiving spot features video and audio from Ye’s much-publicized interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, all scored to a tinkling piano ballad.
Narration from that segment leads the way through a narrative of victimhood, charting the personal and professional fallout after Ye made a series of antisemitic remarks and pulled stunts like debuting a shirt that read “White Lives Matter.”
The ad begins with Carlson introducing his interview with Ye back in October, framing him as “one of the best-selling musical artists in the world,” “a celebrated and very highly paid fashion designer,” and “a Christian evangelist.”
It then cuts to Ye wearing the infamous White Lives Matter shirt to Paris Fashion Week. “The response from the fashion industry and international media was instantaneous and uniform: shock, horror, rage,” Carlson says, before editing in celebrity and peer responses from the likes of Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, Fat Joe and Dave Chappelle criticizing him, making fun of him or all-out calling to “cancel” him.
“Strikingly missing from the coverage, however, was any explanation for why West did this. What was the T-Shirt about? No one seemed to ask him, much less listen to what he had to say,” Carlson said. “Instead the enemies of his ideas dismissed West, as they have for years as mentally ill.”
The ad ends with the word “ye24” on a blue backdrop.
You can watch the full ad campaign in the video above.
