Is Kanye West Headed to Russia, Inviting Putin to His Church Service? For real?
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Ye [formerly Kanye West] made headlines every day this week. Nothing new about that fact, but Billboard’s January 11, 2022 story that the entertainer intends to grow his business in Russia with billionaire developer Aras Agalarov and Agalarov's musician son, EMIN was picked up by Forbes and Business Insider giving it credibility.
AOC found the story totally plausible, given Ye’s relationship with the Trump family and Trump’s relationship with the Agalarovs. Kanye dined with Jared Kushner one-on-one in Miami Beach on January 7, with both parties denying that any business was discussed. The story broke four days later.
Trump and the Agalarovs
In 2013, the Russian oligarch and his son EMIN arranged the kind of spectacle in Moscow that Trump adores. Trump arrived as a surprise guest, with an armored Mercedes stretch limo driving off a freight elevator fight into a ballroom where 3000 Russian guests couldn’t believe their eye as Trump emerged to greet them.
Politico refreshed our memories about Trump and Agalarov in 2016. As Trump sought the nomination for the US presidency, the political website published When Donald Trump brought Miss Universe to Moscow. The article fills in much more background about the 2013 event.
It was West’s confidant and strategic advisor Ameer Sudan who told Billboard that they were working on the arrangements. Russia is going to be “a second home” for Ye, Sudan said: “He will be spending a lot of time out there.”
There’s no disagreement that Sudan is tied closely to West.
Another part of the West camp denies the Billboard Kanye and Putin story entirely, prompting Business Insider to publish the denial. But Rob Goldstone, the PR dude who helped set up the infamous Trump Tower meeting in 2016, says he can “confirm there are talks going on” to bring Ye to Russia. This meeting revolved around Trump Inc. expecting to get damaging and dirty documents on Hillary Clinton from Natalia Veselnitskaya.
Rolling Stone finally wrote a headline: Kanye West’s Associates Can’t Agree on Whether He’s Meeting Vladimir Putin. Forbes did not publish the denial.
Based on other stories with Forbes involving West, the prominent media source wants the denials from West himself. As loquacious as Kanye is — after all, he praises himself in public as much as Trump — surely Kanye can take 60 seconds to confirm to Forbes. After all, they have his billionaire’s list and all. Forbes knows a lot about West’s business connections. And they have writers and contacts worldwide. When Forbes runs the story, they do it with conviction, not just dialing for page clicks. And they are a paywall site looking for higher-income readers.
Trevian Kutti Revisited
This news about Kanye meeting Putin comes also on the heels of reports of West’s publicist Trevian Kutti. The Republican operative is caught on video threatening two Georgia election workers 61-year-old Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss with imminent harm if they didn’t admit to manipulating ballots that were Trump votes.
“Trevian Kutti was not associated with Kanye West or any of his enterprises at the times of the facts that are reported in these articles or since these facts occurred,” said Pierre Rougier, West’s spokesperson, in a statement to Reuters, the original source of the story.
Reuters did publish the Rougier denial, but Forbes took issue that they want to hear the denial from either Kutti or West.
AOC did cover that story and notes that Forbes still hasn’t published the denial from the West camp that they were no longer affiliated with Kutti. Furthermore, Forbes also puts Trevian Kutti backstage at the West-Drake December 9 concert, writing:
Neither Kutti or West responded to requests for comment to Reuters, and Kutti’s online biography lists her as West’s “Director of Operations”—footage she posted on social media appears to show her behind the scenes at a Los Angeles benefit concert where the rapper performed on Thursday evening.
There is no doubt that serious media including the Washington Post and New York Times are investigating the truth to all these political stories about Kanye West that keep breaking nonstop.
Trevian Kutti Was Early Promoter of Kanye West Going to Vuitton Men’s Story
AOC documented from her Instagram that Trevian Kutti was promoting the story that Kanye West should replace Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton men.
It was this possibility breaking throughout media that prompted us to protest the possibility of West at Vuitton Mens. We then discovered all the other headlines about West on the same day.
For the sake of clarity and documentation, the LVM post is also shown in sequence from Kutti’s entire Instagram feed, which is an ode to Kanye and Kyle Rittenhouse.
Is it possible that Kutti was the source of the story about Kanye and Vuitton Men’s? Perhaps. But in the endless claims and barrage of words coming out of Kanye’s Drink Champs podcast, he again commented on the fact that Vuitton should have been his position, not Virgil Abloh’s.
So it could have been a joint effort to launch the story and also to thrown it out as a decoy against more damaging stores. Clearly, the Arnault family saw the West v. Abloh opportunity for LVMH differently.
Kanye also references himself as a young Putin in the two-part Drink Champs podcast. That’s a jaw-dropper. One minute Kanye is God in waiting and the next minute he’s a future authoritarian leader. AOC links into YouTube below for the Drink Champs podcast, but most probably the yellow shirt videos on Kutti’s feed are also from that same interview. They may not be the Putin quote, as over 2 hours of video have been released in two podcasts.
Why Putin and Kanye Together Makes Sense
The Billboard story about Ye coming to Moscow and hopefully meeting with Putin resonated for multiple reasons.
1) Ye fancies himself a member of the Trump inner circle and has an ego commensurate with those of both Trump and Putin.
Note that Kanye insisted that he no longer has the brotherly love for Trump that he once expressed, but he reversed this claim in the Drinks Champs interviews. The intersections of Trump connections in Kanye’s life are prolific and political, including his tight relationship with Jared Kushner.
It’s possible that Kanye’s ego and sense of genius status are so massive that he doesn’t know the ways he’s being used as a pawn to advance Republican politics. Reports that West spoke with Kushner daily during the White House days often advanced the theory that Kushner was manipulating West.
AOC doesn’t pretend to know the extent of West’s involvement with Trump and the Republican party. But Kanye has major headaches ahead.
Recently, it’s reported that Kanye is in some serious trouble over his presidential candidate election violations. And the extent to which his campaign was run by Trump people does beg the question of his genuine independence from Trump and West’s real motive for running for president in the first place.
Highest Level Right-Wing Conservatives Ran West’s Presidential Campaign
2) Substantial information has recently emerged at just how involved Trump’s right-wing conservatives were in running Kanye West’s presidential campaign. The West campaign took steps to disguise their involvement with “a secretive network of Republican Party operatives, including advisers to the GOP elite and a managing partner at one of the top conservative political firms in the country,” wrote Politico in late December 2021.
Kanye has problems that he didn’t report any of this information as required by federal law.
“The importance of disclosure in this matter can’t be overstated,” Paul S. Ryan, vice president of government watchdog Common Cause told The Daily Beast. “It’s no secret that Kanye West’s candidacy would have a spoiler effect, siphoning votes from Democrat Joe Biden. Voters had a right to know that a high-powered Republican lawyer [Holtzman Vogel, one of the most powerful and well-connected law firms serving major Republican political and nonprofit organizations today] was providing legal services to Kanye—and federal law requires disclosure of such legal work.”
AOC didn’t report this information when the story broke, not wanting to be perceived as having a particular grievance with Kanye West. I don’t pretend to be indifferent to the man and his recent actions confirm my worst fears about him. But the only person AOC has bird-dogged daily in almost 15 years is Donald Trump.
Now we’ve decided to follow Ye daily, because it’s a rare day when Kanye West isn’t making news. Kanye is like Trump, wanting his “genius” on display to the entire world with daily headlines. It doesn’t matter if the headline is good or bad. Ye eats up press the same way Trump does.
In November Kanye West Explained Why He Is ‘Young Putin’
West actually compared himself to Putin, calling himself “Young Putin” during an interview on the popular Drink Champs podcast discussed earlier in this article. West told hosts N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN, “Culture is an oil. Culture is an energy, and I’m the king of culture for the past 20 and the next 2,000 years.”
What are more reasons why a Kanye West connection to Putin and Russia seem totally plausible?
3) You may struggle with this idea, but it’s not new and the assertion about evangelical Christians and Putin is rock-solid. Trump Republicans love Vladimir Putin because he is their religious savior. #Truth. Putin has positioned himself as a defender of traditional morals and invoked the Russian Orthodox Church in his speeches.
Putin is very anti-gay rights, but he has been reluctant to take on abortion rights, fearing a backlash. Ordinary people can’t own guns in Russia but Putin champions the NRA, holding conventions in Russia. Imagine that Americans are flying to NRA conventions in Russia.
A 2019 Senate report revealed that the NRA was a foreign asset to Russia ahead of the 2016 campaign.
Kanye West has no fear of trying to end abortion for women worldwide. He’s on it, telling the world that God spoke directly to him in the shower, telling him to shut down Planned Parenthood. Why is this relevant, you ask? Because Billboard wrote that Ye planned to hold Sunday Service performances in Russia.
Billboard wrote in breaking the Kanye in Russia story on Tuesday:
The Sunday Service shows will be Ye’s first performances in Russia in his 25-year career and, according to Sudan, the concerts and the meeting with Putin are something Ye’s been wanting to do since he debuted the Sunday Service project in 2019. The Sunday Service performances will likely be held at the Crocus City Hall theater, which holds more than 7,300 people, or Grand Sports Arena at the 81,000-person Luzhniki Olympic Complex, Russia’s national stadium where much of the 1980 Olympic Games were held. Ye plans to invite Putin to attend the gospel performance as a special guest.
There’s no doubt that this week will bring new Kanye West news of a political nature. His personal life is spiraling in very strange ways as well.
As I’ve written before — having been in police protection for a year over my support for Planned Parenthood and the white dude who was determined to kill me because of it — Kanye West is just another right-wing, patriarchal, authoritarian, ego-maniac in my opinion. Kanye unsettles me as much as Trump.
West lies recklessly, just like Trump and as pressure mounts on him, he is lying about routine matters that concern Kim Kardashian.
I was formerly a West supporter, but no more. Personally, I think Kim Kardashian is in for a very rough ride with this man. He has ALL the habits and mindset of a man who believes women are subordinate to men.
When Ye bought the house across the street from Kim Kardashian to be “close to his kids”, I found the news chilling. I’ve been there and know this screenplay. Just sayin’. ~ Anne
