Jimmy Kimmel spent some time during the monologue of the Halloween episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” talking about Kanye “Ye” West and his continuing string of antisemitic rants. And alongside some other observations, he wondered if psychiatric medicine should consider a completely new diagnosis to describe Ye’s mental illness: “Tri-polar.”
The entertainer has, of course, been making increasingly blatant antisemitic statements for weeks now. The two most recent were a rant he posted on Instagram over the weekend attacking power agent Ari Emanuel and using the term “business” as a clear stand-in for Jewish.
He followed that up with an even wilder turn — in a rant captured by paparazzi Sunday and then in comments to podcaster Lev Fridman, he disavowed his diagnosis of bipolar disorder and blamed it on “Jewish” doctors who he implied were trying to kill him. He also advanced conspiratorial views about Jewish people controlling business and entertainment.
Kimmel brought up this topic after mentioning that Ye has recently endorsed Georgia Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker, quipping that the endorsement “is like crystal meth endorsing lead paint.”
Kimmel noted how Ye has lost lucrative business deals and forced friends and family to cut ties with him, but joked, “Don’t worry, he still has a lot of offensive things to say about people of other races, too.”
Kimmel then played a clip from the paparazzi video in which Ye said, “So when I questioned the death of George Floyd, it hurt my people. I want to apologize. Because God has showed me by what Adidas is doing, by what the media is doing, I know how it feels to have a knee on my neck now.”
That is a reference to how Floyd was murdered by police officers, prompting Kimmel to respond, “No. No you don’t. I think he might be tri-polar. Is that a thing?”
Kimmel continued, saying he it all “may have suggested it’s possible that Kanye is off his meds,” but that it “turns out he was never on them – and you’ll never guess why not.”
The host then played the clip of Ye complaining about Jewish doctors, first euphemistically and then explicitly. “I was misdiagnosed by, I’m not gonna say what race, what people, doctor, and what hospital, and what media want to. We know I can’t say that. It was a Jewish doctor.”
“Oh thank you for letting us know. The suspense was really killing me. I thought maybe he was gonna say ‘Amish,’” Kimmel teased.
Watch the full monologue in the video above.
