Ye, the rap music artist formerly referred to as Kanye West, released his first campaign video Thursday for an unlikely presidential bid in 2024, taking a swipe at former President Donald Trump.
Within the video posted to Twitter, Ye shared that he previously offered Trump a position to be his vice presidential candidate, a comment Ye said confused and frustrated Trump.
“I feel the thing Trump was most perturbed about [was] me asking him to be my vice chairman,” Ye said within the video. “I feel that was lower on the list of things that caught him off guard.”
The comments were made during a “debrief” session about Ye’s visit to the White House and meeting with then-President Trump in Oct. 2018.
In Thursday’s campaign video, Ye also challenged Trump on not acting to legally protect those that invaded the U.S. Capitol Constructing on Jan. 6, 2021, while he was in office.
The “Yeezy” clothing brand owner said he “walked in with intelligence” in the course of the meeting as “someone who loves Trump,” and urged him to listen more to his loyalists.
“He mainly gives me this would-be mob-esque sort of story of all that he went through to get Alice Johnson out of jail and that he didn’t do it for Kim [Kardashian] but he did it for me,” Ye recalls within the video.
Johnson was a 63-year-old who Trump pardoned in 2018.
The music mogul also claimed the previous president yelled at him and insulted his then-wife Kim Kardashian. The 2 split in March 2022.
Ye then claimed Trump “began mainly screaming at me on the table, telling me I’m going to lose.”
“Has that worked for anyone in history?” Ye joked.
He added: “That I’m going to lose? Hold on, you’re talking to Ye.”
Ye has not officially announced his intention to run, although he has previously commented that he would seek the presidency in 2024.
Trump formally entered the 2024 presidential election one week after the midterm elections, promising to “make America great and glorious again.”
“I’m running because I think the world has not yet seen the true glory of what this nation might be. We have now not reached that pinnacle, consider it or not,” Trump said on Nov. 15.
He added: “Just as I promised in 2016, I’m your voice. I’m your voice. The Washington establishment desires to silence us, but we won’t allow them to try this. What now we have built together over the past six years is the best movement in history since it shouldn’t be about politics. It’s about our love for this great country, America, and we’re not going to let it fail.”
