I missed a day so I'm a little behind on the news, but most of you know that Kanye is pulling back from politics because he says he did not design the Blexit t-shirt and hat and logo. So he is, because there was a suggestion that he was the designer, he wanted to pull back because he felt used.

Now my take on this is that it would be very unlikely if Candace or anybody else intentionally said, "Hey, let's just claim that Kanye designed this and it's his." So I don't think anybody did that. It just sounds like a miscommunication. So the actual event is less important than the bigger picture.

Were any of you surprised that Kanye pivoted away from Republicans? Think about what he said he wants to do. He wants to run for president in 2024. If Kanye really wanted to run for president in 2024, how long should he keep being more friendly with Republicans than Democrats? Well, not too long. He'd be better to sort of pivot over to the Democrats because that's the only party he could get elected in.

So as popular as Kanye is with Republicans, he's popular because of really his style, the fact that he's willing to embrace President Trump. So he's popular for reasons that don't have anything to do with policy. On a policy level it feels to me he's going to be more likely leaning Democrat. So there's no way he would run as a Republican.

But what is the very strongest package you could create going into a presidential election? Well, you saw President Trump do it. He used to be a Democrat, used to be a Democrat, now he's a Republican. You saw Mike Bloomberg do it. Used to be a Republican and then he became a Democrat.

To my mind the strongest positioning, the strongest setting the table for becoming president, is that you used to be on the other side, or at the very least you used to be really friendly with the other side. Because what do people care about most when they're voting for president? Are you on my side? Can you understand my side? Have you ever had an appreciation for my side?

It's one thing that you don't agree with me. You know, it's routine that somebody doesn't agree with you. Somebody says, Reagan did. Reagan also switched. Was Reagan a Democrat? He was, right? He also switched. Because what that does is that allows the other team to say, "Well I don't love everything about your policies but I still like you. And if I still like you, maybe more than I like the one running from my own party, this time I'm gonna go over and vote the other side."

So somebody says, so he was pacing us in a sense. Yes, in a sense he was pacing the Republicans because he was agreeing with them in their support for President Trump as a person and not damning him as a crazy racist and stuff like that.

And he was also... so just to be clear I don't want to make sure that I'm not putting any opinions into Kanye's. His opinions are just for him to express. So if I've said that accidentally, I think I got close to saying that. You know, we'll pull that back a little bit. We don't know what he's thinking. We can only observe what's happening.

Okay, so what's happening is he's doing exactly what you would do if you were really smart and planning to run for president in 2024. So what you've seen this week was consistent with being brilliant if you plan to run for president in 2024.

Now here's the other element. It would also be consistent with not wanting to run for president in 2024, because in either case he wants to demonstrate his independence of thought. So he can be pro-President Trump as a person and wanting him to look good as a leader because he represents the country. So that's essentially what Kanye said. But he can also, you know, he's a free thinker and he doesn't have to stay in any camp longer than he wants to.

So I like that about him. I would say that my opinion of Kanye went up a little bit because it is the time to pivot. He needs to live in the community that is primarily anti-Trump. So for practical reasons, for professional reasons, for personal reasons, and even if someday he runs for president, political reasons, it was important for him to show some independence, which he just demonstrated in a graphic way.

Now the actual source of the dispute, if you could call it that, I'm not sure dispute is really the right word, but that I think there was a miscommunication about the logo, probably is not the important part of the story. Probably not.