Ye’s latest interview arrived Monday night courtesy of Chris Cuomo.
The ex-CNN host, now at NewsNation, shared a 20-minute segment where the multi-hyphenate formerly known as Kanye West spoke remotely from a vehicle. They touched on West’s plan to purchase Parler and his recent antisemitic remarks, among other topics.
“I don’t like the term antisemitic,” West said when pressed at the 4:30 mark above about his series of harmful comments about Jewish people. “It’s been a term that’s allowed people, specifically in my industry, to get away with murder—sometimes literally—and get away with robbing and doing bad [to] people. … You’re saying it’s antisemitic, but I don’t believe in that term. One thing is, Black people are also Jew. I classify as Jew also, so I actually can’t be a antisemite. So the term is actually, uh, it’s not factual.”
When Cuomo interjected at one point, beginning to insist “you have to understand how,” West cut him off and continued, “Everyone wants to shoot the messenger. … ‘You have to understand’—but the thing is, the Jewish people that I’m talking about don’t have to understand. And that is that privilege that I’m not going to allow.”
The 45-year-old continued at the 7:23 mark, “When I wore the ‘white lives matter’ t-shirt, the Jewish underground media mafia already started attacking me. They canceled my four SoFi Stadium shows, they had the press—the same people, the…outlets that when I was arguing with Pete Davidson and Trevor Noah, they called me an abuser for arguing with people about my ex-wife and my family, and when I get to see my kids and when I don’t. And they just immediately disrespect me, they keep the ‘crazy’ narrative going, they never call me a billionaire. We never talked about, even on this one right here, hey: tycoon, billionaire, visionary, inventor. These are never used.”
Cuomo clarified for West that “there is no Jewish media cabal mafia.”
After having his Instagram account restricted last week, Ye returned to Twitter, writing at one point “when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” He told Cuomo on Monday, “When I said DEFCON 3, what I was saying is, ‘I’m gonna talk about all these things that I saw, that just so happened to be by Jewish executives or Jewish friends of mine.’”
On Monday, an instantly controversial Drink Champs podcast conversation with West—which saw him spread lies about the murder of George Floyd—was pulled from Revolt’s YouTube channel. Last week, Maverick Carter—SpringHill Company CEO and LeBron’s co-host on The Shop—revealed that an episode taped with West will not air.
“Unfortunately, he used The Shop to reiterate more hate speech and extremely dangerous stereotypes,” Carter stated. “We have made the decision not to air this episode or any of Kanye’s remarks. While The Shop embraces thoughtful discourse and differing opinions, we have zero tolerance for hate speech of any kind and will never allow our channels to be used to promote hate.”
Prior to those developments, West sat with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. While that conversation contained plenty of its own issues, days later footage emerged showing antisemitic remarks had been edited out. The Ringer podcaster/author Van Lathan also shared last week that for Ye’s 2018 interview at TMZ—which spawned Lathan and West’s viral back-and-forth over the false notion that slavery was a choice—the outlet edited out “Kanye saying he loved Hitler and the Nazis.”