Steve Stoute on Kanye West's Presidential Bid: 'I Don't Want Black People Voting for Kanye'

Steve Stoute expressed his aversion toward Kanye West's presidential campaign, encouraging Black people not to vote for Yeezy this November.

steve stoute blm
Image via Getty/ Jesse Grant
steve stoute blm

Steve Stoute isn’t a fan of Kanye West’s decision to run for president.

“I don't want Black people voting for Kanye West,” Stoute said in the new episode of The Boardroom: Out of Office podcast. “I don't want anybody Black running around voting for Kanye West. If you're gonna vote for Donald Trump and you choose Kanye West instead of Donald Trump, great. That will help the Biden campaign. But I don't want Black people who were thinking about voting for Biden, voting for Kanye West, in the markets, in the areas that he's registered as a candidate. That's going to hurt us.”

Stoute isn’t Kanye’s only detractor. Michelle Obama recently seemed to take a jab at the rapper during her Democratic National Convention speech, and this week 50 Cent wondered if West could “go to jail for tampering with the election,” citing 'Ye’s coronavirus bailout and his campaign’s Trump connections as justification.

But a new poll might assuage Stoute's worries: the mid-August survey indicated Yeezy has 2 percent of support from registered Black voters. Kanye is now set to appear on the ballot in eight states: Oklahoma, Arkansas, Colorado, Vermont, Utah, Tennessee, Minnesota, and Idaho.

Kevin Durant joined Stoute during the podcast, where the pair discussed a number of other topics, including athletes’ responsibilities to their communities regarding social justice issues. Durant explained that athletes “do a lot in our neighborhoods, we do a lot in the communities already, and for us using our platforms to speak about it is definitely cool, it's definitely good to raise awareness. But at this point, I'm ready to see more action.”

He continued, “I think we got more allies now than anything, and I think that's the great part about it is, that the awareness—everybody's consciousness has been raised since the quarantine. But on top of that, more people are starting to listen to each other about these social issues.”

He added, “But for players, we have a huge impact in these cities we play in … [and] once we really get down to the grassroots of these neighborhoods we've been at, and really helping these people... Really getting into the field of helping these people, I think we can make more change.”

Listen to the full episode below.

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