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Kanye West has surrounded himself with far-right activists since splitting from his ex-wife Kim Kardashian, even bringing along a Gen Z white nationalist to dinner last fall with former President Donald Trump.
Kanye West arrives at the Balenciaga show on May 22, 2022 in New York City. Gotham/GC Images
- Kanye West paid nearly $15,000 to white nationalist Nick Fuentes, per campaign finance records.
- The payment was described as a reimbursement for travel expenses.
- Fuentes traveled with West to meet with former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
A new filing from the occasional rapper’s presidential campaign shows those relationships have not come cheap.
In a year-end report required by the Federal Election Commission, submitted Monday, West’s 2020 presidential campaign committee revealed a total of $14,719 in payouts to Nick Fuentes, a 24-year-old far-right influencer who has praised Adolf Hitler and organized conferences attended by the likes of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The disbursements to Fuentes are labeled as reimbursement for travel expenses, the first such payment, of just over $9,000, coming the same day as the pair met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
West’s campaign also made payments to another far-right provocateur, Milo Yiannopoulous. A former writer for Breitbart, the news site once led by Steve Bannon, Yiannopoulous was a rising star on the right before comments resurfaced in 2017 in which he appeared to defend pedophilia. He reemerged last year when he was hired by Rep. Greene after ostensibly renouncing his homosexuality.
In November 2022, West — who has himself lauded Hitler and vowed to go “death con 3” on Jews — said he was hiring Yiannopoulous to advise him ahead of another presidential run. That lasted about a month before Yiannopoulous announced his departure.
It was a lucrative 30 days for the “ex-gay” activist. According to campaign records, Yiannopoulous pocketed nearly $50,000 from the West campaign: $9,955 for a “Domain Transfer,” dated the same day as the meeting with Trump, and $40,000 in mid-December for “Campaign Wrap Up Services.”
Although West has lost millions of dollars in sponsorships since he began espousing extremist views, his campaign committee reported still having more than $228,000 in cash on hand at the end of last year.
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/
