Donald Trump thinks Kanye West will be OK despite the consequences of his antisemitic comments, countering widespread backlash of the rapper by saying he actually sounded “very sharp and very smart” in a now-infamous Fox News interview.
Trump appeared on The Chris Stigall podcast Tuesday and broached the subject of Ye and the interview he did, from which antisemitic comments were edited out — but then leaked.
Trump said he was honored when Kanye further aligned himself with the ex-president in the interview.
“I was very honored because I didn’t know him that well. But I liked him. I always got along with him very well,” Trump said. “I was very honored in a sense because he said all those great things about me on Tucker Carlson. He made some statements — rough statements on Jewish — you heard them and you know them well.”
As he often does, Trump pointed to a mysterious group of people in saying that the backlash against Ye was rooted in the rapper’s support of the former president.
“They’re saying that that was the reason. So you ask, ‘Well, would it have been the same thing if he didn’t say all those good things about Trump?’ You just don’t know,” Trump said. “He’ll be fine. I think he’ll be fine. He’s a very different kind of a guy, and it’s very interesting to hear him on Tucker Carlson because you never hear him in long sentences. He was actually very sharp and very, very smart. I was. I was impressed by a lot of what he said.”
In one edited clip from the interview, referring to the antisemitic belief that Jewish people control the financial system, Ye said, “I’d prefer my kids knew Hanukkah than Kwanzaa, at least it would come with some financial engineering.”
Ye later added that Planned Parenthood creator Margaret Sanger, who he called a “known eugenics,” worked with the KKK to create the organization “to control the Jew population.” While Ye was correct in condemning Sanger for participating in eugenics, a topic Planned Parenthood has denounced, he went on to refer to the belief that Black people are the “real” Jewish race, a claim that has been used to promote antisemitism.
“When I say Jew,” he continued in the edited portion of the Fox News interview, “I mean the 12 lost tribes of Judah, the blood of Christ, who the people known as the race Black really are. This is who our people are. The blood of Christ. This, as a Christian, is my belief.”
Ye, who has made similar comments on social media, has since been dropped by nearly every professional outlet and retailer he had financial ties with, including Adidas, in a whirlwind downfall he claimed last week cost him $2 billion in a single day.
