Kanye West’s first extended interview since his meeting with former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago last week lasted about 20 minutes.
The artist now known as Ye stormed out of a sit-down with the reactionary social-media performer Tim Pool, after the host lightly pushed back on Ye’s meandering, paranoid, and yet largely uninterrupted antisemitic rant that opened the show.
During that 20-minute stretch, West offered a sprawling, aggrieved commentary railing against those he believes had harmed him, including but not limited to: a designer at Adidas who Ye is convinced was a CIA and somehow also a “Zionist” plant; Jamie Dimon; Hollywood executives; the Gap; his former trainer and also, in Ye’s mind a Canadian deep-state agent; and, of course, the fictional Jewish cabal in charge of both banking and media. “It was like American History X, like my head was on the side of the curb, and the exact people that I called out kick my head,” said Ye. The rapper also appeared to back Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving, who similarly posted antisemitic material, and talked about the true “bloodlines” of Black people.
“Rahm Emanuel was right next to Obama, and then Jared Kushner was right next to Trump,” Ye added, ending with a “da-da!” musical flourish to punctuate his antisemitic talking point about Jews being puppet masters.
During a brief pause in his near-monologue, Pool told Ye, “I think they’ve been extremely unfair to you.” When asked by Ye to clarify who he meant by “they,” Pool replied: “The corporate press.” That didn’t satisfy Ye. “Who is ‘they,’ though?” he shot back. As Pool stammered, one of the evening’s other guests chimed in: Nick Fuentes, the 23-year-old white nationalist and Holocaust denier, who had taken on an undefined role in Ye’s largely theoretical 2024 presidential campaign. “It is them, though, isn’t it?” Fuentes said, again referring to Jewish people.
Evidently, because Pool refused to play into one of the oldest antisemitic tropes around, Ye considered it a bridge too far. Before Pool could get another word in edgewise, West rose from out of his chair and silently marched out of the studio.
