After Elon Musk temporarily banned Kanye “Ye” West from using Twitter Thursday night, “CNN This Morning” host Don Lemon led a segment Friday tying the rapper’s ongoing antisemitic outbursts back to former president Donald Trump and other Republicans, concluding, “It is hate in the mainstream.”
Lemon also blasted Republicans on the House of Representatives’ judiciary committee who belatedly deleted an October tweet praising the rapper with the words: “Kanye. Elon. Trump.”
“First: House Republicans finally removing a tweet from two months ago in which they praised West, they praised Musk and Donald Trump in the same tweet,” Lemon said.
“Since then, West, of course, has spent weeks on a parade of antisemitic rants and losing his billionaire status as a result,” Lemon continued. “Musk spent $44 billion to take over a company, spending his time attacking and insulting people, tweeting out misinformation and images used by racists.”
“The second noteworthy thing this morning,” Lemon said, pulling up an image of Ye interviewing with Jones alongside white supremacist Nick Fuentes, “is that all three of these men – seen here engaged in this antisemitic conversation – they have connections to Donald Trump. In fact, two of them, sitting right there, a Holocaust denier, white supremacist and a Hitler-praising antisemite had dinner with the current presidential candidate a week ago inside his home, a place that is currently under federal investigation. And as CNN reports, Trump at one point during the dinner said that he liked the white nationalist.”
Breaking down how such hateful rhetoric continues to infiltrate the most powerful in the Republican Party, Lemon concluded, simply: “It is hate in the mainstream.”
Also on Thursday, Elon Musk suspended Ye’s Twitter account after the rapper tweeted the image of a swastika wrapped inside a star of David – a message sent hours after the posting of an interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in which Ye praised Hitler and said he loved Nazis.
“We are not going to show you the image because it is hateful, nor will we be showing you the deranged clip of West praising Hitler and saying that he loves Nazis on a show run by Alex Jones,” Lemon said in his intro.
Watch the full segment in the video above.
